Article July 21, 1980 Issue

Someone to love

DOROTHY FOX BARTELS-KEITH

Everyone needs to feel and express love. Some people can do so effortlessly and naturally; but for many, love remains locked away in icebound vaults of the heart, apparently beyond reach. The need to spiritualize our concept of love—whether this effort be easy or difficult—is of utmost importance. Our decision to approach love either from a material or from a spiritual standpoint can make all the difference in our lives.

Christian Science gives us a radical view of God as divine Love, lifting love completely out of corporeality. Love is unconfined and never entertains or expresses any illusion of finiteness. In discussing Love, Mrs. Eddy writes: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 249-250;} This Love is Father-Mother and cares for its ideas with the utmost tenderness and solicitude. In proportion as our love is based on the true facts of being, it approximates the divine, becomes more certain; and our joy becomes more permanent.

Love conveys to us the nature and essence of God. What the physical senses tell us about love is sometimes its very opposite. Because personal sense testimony is limited, love seen through the lens of matter includes a beginning and an ending. Hate, envy, rivalry, jealousy, are distortions of a love based solely on a material outlook. On the other hand, because of its all-inclusiveness, divine Love is perpetually enfolding within itself its own complete expression. The physical senses with their wavering emotionalism can never tell us of the constancy, the boundlessness, the Soul-sense, of Love. Love as Life brings us health and activity, demands to be lived and used, not just thought and spoken. Love seen as Principle helps us illustrate the facts of being in caring and compassion, thus bringing a law of good to bear on our lives and meeting humanity's need.

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