IDEA 10
Love is Another Mystery
Divine Love is thus well within its right to leap over the boundary between the infinite and the finite, between the eternal and the mortal, and to draw the greatest good in worldly life into the ambit of the everlasting. Somehow, we know that love in the form of Mercy is far more profound and awesome than the mere workings of biological drives and animal instincts. Divine Love is one of the most beautiful absolutes we have all experienced in some form or another. GOD personifies it; He is its source. (IIQ, page 19)
Come to think of it, Love makes no sense.
GOD does not need it. But one could say He does almost nothing else but Love. GOD does Love the way painters paint and singers sing — freely, impulsively, and — unlike them — constantly, minutely, and on the grandest scale imaginable, i.e., infinitely.
The thing about love, at least as we know it, is that it just does not work solo. Women want affection … from their lovers. Men want respect … from their peers. Babies want to be held and played with; they cannot get much of that by themselves. Old people want to be flattered or at least listened to. Is all this neediness natural … or supernatural?
Natural, you will say. Bees and flowers are in love with each other. Look at the symbiosis between trees and birds, between sea anemones and clownfish, or the sehr gut feeling we get when our bacteria and our guts get along.
Look deeper still. The delicately arranged marriage of fires with forests. The triadic dance between land, sea, and sky in the water cycle of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and streams running downhill to the ocean. The amazing union of hydrogen and oxygen that gives us water. Or the finely tuned camaraderie of physical constants in the universe that make it optimal for life (or so many scientists believe).
What is GOD trying to tell us here? That He made everything imperfect, but with an unquenchable urge to perfection? That he intended us to be more than mere self-centred creatures? That when we stop seeking something greater than ourselves, we die? Check. Check. Check. Yes, and this too:
The enheartened character of the universe is a vital condition of its being, its inner nature and constitution, and not just an afterthought or an appendix to the supposedly essential facts of physical science. Rather the facts are dependent on a continuous act of Love, holding back the collapse of this beautiful and amazing absurdity that we have learned to consider normal. Love makes time and space for the work of Truth. (IIQ: page 38)
Download the PDF version for free at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’ān – Mont Redmond complete version, or purchase a hard copy at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an: Redmond, Mont: 9781738842506: Books – Amazon.ca.
