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Playing with Love

I have been thinking about the way people write about love. As I perform in various places I sing a number of love songs; nearly all of them are what I call "unfortunate love songs." I also notice that many people who post about their love lives, or lack of, on xanga share about their struggles over love. Not that there is anything wrong with that. It shows us that love is a deeply felt and sought after experience.

spent a thousand lone cold nights thinking i would gladly hurt if i could feel.

spent a thousand empty days lookin' for a girl to make me real.

when all this time your face was all around me.

ah these loving arms held me so closely

-The Normals, Coming to Life

Thanx Jenn, from xanga for the pic!

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. -C. S. Lewis

The Kiss

In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman's face: I stand by the bed where the young woman lies . . . her face, postoperative . . . her mouth twisted in palsy . . . clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight . . . isolated from me . . .private. Who are they? I ask myself . . . he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "it's kind of cute." All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers. . . to show her that their kiss still works.

This story is an example of love. Not the type of love that comes and goes, that you get board with and throw it away. This is not the type of love that has conditions. This is not the type of love that you casually play with. God gives us a really good definition of real love, not play love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

• If you judge your dating experiences by 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 how do they compare?
• Are you ready to use God's definition of love when you date? Why or why not?

Getting personal

• Have you ever played with love?
• Has anyone ever played with your love?
• Is dating the best way to find a mate?