Of Wives and Men

In suggesting how men ought to love their wives, St. John Chrysostom notably said,"I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you."

This is perhaps my favorite explanation of love between a man and woman, that the man who loves a woman wants heaven for her more than anything. No pleasure on earth could outmatch his desire to be with her for eternity. Inasmuch as we are loved, so we seek to love.
"No one takes My life from me; I freely give it."
Subdeacon Stephen Muse (Ph.D.) has commented on this and it's scurried 'round my mind ever since:

"The many ways that we discover the length and depth and breadth of divine love in our lives as we wrestle with the meaning and purpose of life on earth in the smallest details of our lives testifies to the truth of Ernesto Cardenal’s observation that we human beings 'are not a meaningless passion as Sartre supposed but a passion whose meaning is God.' Someone asked Archimandrite Sophrony once during one of his talks, 'Tell me, Father, what is God?' Archimandrite Sophrony responded, 'First, you tell me, what is man?' Paul Ricoeur said, 'The quickest way to the self is through the other.' Jean-Paul Sartre said, 'The other is hell.' Perhaps Orthodoxy’s combination of these two is, 'The way to God is through hell for the sake of the other.'"
To rather go to hell for the other, than heaven without them.
God, please help us love as You do. 

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. Youth is the loneliest time of all. I think I'll write kids' books.
From my meager understanding, if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, s/he grows old never knowing how to evaluate where s/he is in life; never understanding what joy really is. But it comes then, and it burns all shadows away for a time--just enough time, thank G-d--and the whole world is ablaze with Him and you can find Him anywhere. In those dark moments, it's like you’re riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it’s sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But in that dark night, if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments. And that can be enough.
I just need to know that You understand. I've found above everything that the sheer possibility of Your love burns all the shadows away. But for me to say You turn away is like saying the sun hides itself itself from the blind... G-d, save Your despairing people.
And it is enough. You are enough. Please be enough.

An Evening Musing

The colours of the setting sun easing their fire (feverishly) onto the beaming snow. Imagining You madly in love, tipping that little flare of Your Light over the edge of the world with the laughter of a child or a lover, delicately, so delicately. Emptying an Eternity of Love on us again.
And my sodapop mind trying to scoop up the boundless ocean of You--No.
Empty me of me. Now lemme take You in. A glass can only spill what it contains.