[NOTE: This is the fourth and final post of a multi-part series on the subject of love, lovers, and loving. To read the first post in this series, please follow the link HERE. The second post is HERE. The third post is HERE.]
Miscellaneous Thoughts
on
LOVE & DEATH
“When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart. For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.”
-Frederick Buechner, from ‘Whistling in the Dark’
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“I have remembered you.
You were not the town visited once,
Nor the road falling behind running feet.
You were as awkward as flesh
And lighter than frost or ashes.
You were the rind,
And the white-juiced apple,
The song, and the words waiting for music.”
-Louise Bogan, ‘Body of this Death: Poems’
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“But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.”
-Rev. John Donne, ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’
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“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.”
–Song of Solomon 8:6
Husband & Wife.
Three Stages of Ol Suit.
Does love survive the dissolution of the body? Can something so inexpressibly wonderful — so much larger than even life could contain — die too when our bodies die? Or does love survive the collapse of our earthly husk to thrive in that land whose Builder and Maker is named Love? After these 32 years of pastoral service, and many, many conversations with those who have suffered the death of a loved one, I am more and more convinced: love never dies.
Jesus tells us that the unique husband-wife relationship will not survive this world (see Matt. 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:35). Indeed, it could not. For in Heaven there will apparently be no barriers nor exclusivity between God’s children. Yet the love we share there cannot be inferior to that shared by even the most intimate of partners here. For Heaven will not let itself be longing for anything of earth. Everything we know of it tells us that it is “better” and completely satisfying to the remotest, most extensive longings of the human heart. Here, those longings find only partial satisfaction. But Heaven will not be inferior to earth. The place Jesus promises to bring us to is suited to us. In His own words, “I go to prepare a place for you…” (John 14:2)
C. S. Lewis drives toward this same point when he says: “You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw-but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it-tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest-if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself-you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it-made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
As we have been spiritually formed for love…to give and to receive it…we must be intended to continue loving even beyond the bounds of time and mortality. No less a person than the Rev. John Wesley has commented that, “The heaven of heavens is love. There is nothing higher in religion; there is , in effect, nothing else.” (‘A Plain Account’) We will not cease to be loving beings merely because we have left the weakness of earth behind. We were made for love from the inside out and it does appear that we will still be loving God and one another in eternity in ways that transcend all that we have known in this life. We will not find find ourselves in heaven longing for earth; in God’s new Heaven there will be complete satisfaction of all our noble desires.
Love in the Presence of Death
It, therefore, seems that love even now may carry our spirits past death’s dark barricades and into the camp of the glorified. When I was but a lad, I went through a time of special sensitivity to homesickness. It was not sickness for home, per se, but for mom and dad…the ones who made home truly “home”. If my parents were out-of-town for more than a couple of days, I would become physically ill, so great was my longing for them. Although years have passed since then and my childish sentiments have faded into the past, my parents continue to be important figures in my life. My father passed away not long ago and I wondered, myself, what to expect by way of emotional response. I know that I cannot “prove” my thesis (of the survivability of love) merely arguing only from my own case, but I have the sense that my father still lives. He lives no less and, in reality, more vigorously than he did when inhabiting his physical body. It is as though he has gone into the next room…a room to which I may not immediately follow…but will in due course. Someday, in the not too distant future, I will lay down “the machine” in which my spirit has resided and join him there. “The machine” must be left behind as it is as out of place there as it would be beneath the vast waters of the ocean.
During the Acherontic darkness of the war between the states there were, here and there, flashes of the divine brilliance of love. Among the sweetest instances of this is the love letter of the Major Sullivan Ballou to his one love and bride. Just one week before the battle of Bull Run Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote to his wife, at home in Smithfield.
————
July 14,1861
Camp Clark, Washington DC
Dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.
I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing – perfectly willing – to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.
Major Sullivan Ballou
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and see our boys grown up to honorable manhood around us.
If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name…
Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been! . . .
But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you, in the brightest day and in the darkest night… always, always. And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath, or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah do not mourn me dead-think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again…
——|*|——
Major Ballou was killed a week later at the First Battle of Bull Run.
Finally, let me say that I believe there is now a sense in which love may transport us over the barrier of death (as Major Ballou suggests) and – after a fashion (though certainly not as necromancers and spiritists would allege) – bond us with our loved ones who have died in the Lord. I am not separated from my father or grandparents in any sense but the physical. I believe earnestly in the conscious continuing existence of the saints. I am aware that the God to Whom I pray is as really with them as with me. In Him we still meet. As Charles Wesley once wrote:
Come, Let Us Join Our Friends Above
Charles Wesley, 1707-1788
1. Come, let us join our friends above
who have obtained the prize,
and on the eagle wings of love
to joys celestial rise.
Let saints on earth unite to sing
with those to glory gone,
for all the servants of our King
in earth and heaven are one.
2. One family we dwell in him,
one church above, beneath,
though now divided by the stream,
the narrow stream of death;
one army of the living God,
to his command we bow;
part of his host have crossed the flood,
and part are crossing now.
3. Ten thousand to their endless home
this solemn moment fly,
and we are to the margin come,
and we expect to die.
E’en now by faith we join our hands
with those that went before,
and greet the blood-besprinkled bands
on the eternal shore.
4. Our spirits too shall quickly join,
like theirs with glory crowned,
and shout to see our Captain’s sign,
to hear this trumpet sound.
O that we now might grasp our Guide!
O that the word were given!
Come, Lord of Hosts, the waves divide,
and land us all in heaven.
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The following letter from one man to another (who had lost his wife to cancer) provides some perspective on the relationship of believers to death:
“I’m sorry, man.
In my blundering way, I didn’t pick up on the fact that it was *your*
wife and sweetheart we were speaking of. You please forgive me for
that, won’t you?
I cannot say I feel what you are feeling. I’ve never suffered so crushing
a loss.
But I can say, from my soul, that I’m sorry it has happened to you
and your child. It’s a cuss’d thing, death. No respecter of love or
need or longing. And keeping what he plunders from us with a cold and
steely-bitter grip.
But he cannot take our memories. He cannot keep our loved ones from
coming to us in our dreams. He has no power to remove them from our
hearts. Although I’m not one for preachiness, I do have a slightly
mystical side. That side of me prefers to think of them as merely “in
another room”…a room from which they cannot return but to which one
day I will gladly run. You, too?
I know there are some who look upon death with a bare materialistic
matter-of-factness. They see no need of trying to make sense of it or
of trying to construct a rationale to explain it or to dream of a time
of reunion later on. For myself, I cannot live there. I must cling to
the hope that somehow, and in some way, all our ancestral longings,
the ancient utterances of every primitive tribe of which I am aware
and, most especially, the distinctive teachings of my Christian faith
are valid: there is a place, there is a way, there is a future joy.
Now, this is nothing like the religious explanations of the New Age or
the oft-times weird, mentally and spiritually enslaving convolutions
that the various plotting cultic puppetmasters concoct. This is
unformed, inexplicable, and untamed. I simply believe that Life is too
precious a thing to be wasted on a one-time appearance.
If even matter changes form but is never lost, then what of the
immaterial? What of the human personality? What of you? or me? or your
dear wife?
No. If I have a vote, you and I will have the last laugh at Death’s
expense. We will swing our feet from some distant place, laughing
until the Universe vibrates for joy at endless Life; Amused at Death’s
quirky game of playing “hide-n-seek” with our loved ones…but, in the
end, always forced to surrender them up to a grand reunion!
Laughing, laughing, laughing we will be.
And Death, embarrassed at our innocent scoffing, will stumble off to
play in another universe where people take him seriously still.
And we will laugh, too, at that. Me, with my big stupid grin on my
face. And you, with your also-laughing beautiful bride in your arms.”
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Having now exhausted my time to write on the subject of love (life now intruding as it seems to do with most all our joys) I will end simply by appending the words of a song about the greatest love known on earth — one that resonates in my own heart this morning:
How Deep The Father’s Love For Us
Words and Music by Stuart Townsend
How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He would give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.
Behold the Man upon a cross
My guilt upon His shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished.
I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no powr’s, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.
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PART ONE
HERE
PART TWO
HERE
PART THREE
HERE
PART FOUR
HERE
