Love is...

A few months ago, I attended the funeral of a childhood friend’s great uncle. This uncle I had met a few times here and there growing up, but the majority of our time together dates back to a family camping trip in Death Valley I was invited to when I was 12 years old.

This trip long ago holds some significance for me because it was the first time I had been around a large family like this, and was my exposure to, say, a predominantly white American family gathering. I remember feeling like the odd one out, reinforced by some comments made around the campfire. I also remember diving into sand dunes at night in complete blackness, playing hide and seek with lanterns. I remember trying chicken salad for the first time. And somehow, most significantly, I’ll always remember how quiet it is out in the desert. I have yet to find anywhere else on earth as quiet.

I also remember sitting with uncle Dennis and discussing music. I had, for a few years now, been taking piano lessons, and Dennis was, long before, the band director for our high school’s prestigious marching band. He was encouraging and kind; certainly the qualities of a lifelong love of music and teaching children.

At the funeral, held in a contemporary Protestant church, there were hundreds of attendees. It was a beautiful service, and I personally found it remarkable and heartwarming to see the service of someone who had genuinely affected so many people. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be loved and appreciated by so many, but I am resolved to do my best to be a force for good in my life. Maybe we can only achieve a kind of perfection in death and the memories of others.

I didn’t quite cry, but I was very moved by the musical service performed at the funeral. There was a large choir, and an organist, performing after each section of the service. I was particularly struck by this piece, entitled The Majesty and Glory of Your Name, which is really just the text of Psalm 8, arranged to contemporary chorale.

As an aside, I find this piece to be quintessentially Californian in nature, which I appreciate. It was arranged by a California native and is regularly performed in the state, a place that is so far from Rome or Cappadocia. I find it very beautiful that all over the world, in so many pockets and dioceses, are people writing and performing a music with no expectation or desire of material gain, only exaltation.

It was this that struck me in the moment, that this music, so moving as to really have me almost to tears, was being performed solely in solemnity for the people in the audience and for no other reason than for beauty and reverence of life. That’s not what I wanted to write about, though it did affect me enough to really think about and consider how I want to make music and be useful, virtuous, and good to the world.

What I cannot come back from is a newfound desire for absolute selflessness, a state of pure giving and openness. I am, increasingly, offended and disgusted at my self-serving past and my constant desire for validation from others. My selfishness has always been the crux of my negative outcomes. In this line, I began to think about what love is, and if I have ever really been loving or been loved.

If I had been asked a few years ago what love is, I would have said something like ‘tenderness and acceptance’, or ‘fraternity’ or even ‘support’. And in the most recent years I might have said something like ‘love is sacrifice’. Now, I can only think of love in a transcendental, sacred sense - love is everywhere, encoded into the very nature of things, and yet none can feel it. And what do we have as small, insignificant humans? We have those things we hold dearest - tenderness, acceptance, fraternity, selflessness, sacrifice, and support. But I don’t think we have love, or at least we have to work very hard at it.

There is an idea of ‘God’s love’, which is perhaps best summed up by Romans 8:28 as all things work together for good. It’s hard to imagine a more warming thought, that beyond one’s own ego is a transcendental machine that accepts all things and produces goodness. Perhaps one way to think about this love is that it is perfectly asymmetrical, or unconditional, and so we are all spoiled in receiving it, thus most likely to fail to give it though we should try our best.

I wonder if it is possible to love each other like trees love sunlight, or grass loves rain. Or how death loves dirt, fire loves ash, and water loves mud. It feels like on some level, it is easiest and purest to love God, and by doing so love an abstraction of the world. But I want to love others in the same way, though it is often difficult. People have all kinds of contexts in which it is easy to love in one, and hate in the other. Unlike God, we have no hypostasis, but maybe that is the only struggle worth having with one’s own ego - getting it out of the way so that we can love each other.