Thursday, July 01, 2010

For Love Is Sufficient Unto Love


For Love Is Sufficient Unto Love



If you have not known how much God loves Israel and often chastises her, you will never understand me and if you have never known how much Kahlil Gibran expressed love you will never know me.

Because I am sweet and I am sour, I am like fire that warms and also burns.
Chi, how would they understand the essence of romance when they have no conscience.
You see how she came waging her tail with the green flies following her. She came to lap my feet, but I removed them before her forked tongue could lick them and smear them with her scarlet lies.

I threw the fresh pieces of meat at her and she ate them all. I gave her the bones and she ate them too. She was still hungry for more. But I ignored her and she snarled and barked at me. I shouted at her. She was a greedy dog. She was soon growling at me. Later I saw her straying on the street. I saw her sniffing behind another dog. The naughty woman was in the heat of summer. She followed him to a corner of the street and entered into the den of their dog eat dog world. Phew! I heaved a sigh of relief and went home to see Chi.
I read from The Prophet of Kahlil Gibran.





When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you unclothed.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love
.

I asked Chi if she has read the love letters of Khalil Gibran and Mary Haskell. She shook her head.
It should be a good birthday present to give her later this month.
She sighed. She has been reading my Language of True Love and knew how much love is sacred to me.
She said she has never slept with a man, except some pecks and kisses, but not sexual intercourse.
She said she would love to do so soon
I read her more from The Prophet.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements
?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes
.





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