God is love, they say, but there is
no god. Therefore, how can there be love?
And if there is no love, how can there be God?
There are things in life, I suppose,
that are simply unanswerable mysteries
of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.
Maybe there are many loves, instead of one.
The difference between what isn’t and what is
could merely be one of scope. The mystery
is how we speak only of one love—
to act as though we know we are supposed
to love only one other, or that one other and God.
But supposing that one other is God?
What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone,
supported by God only when He feels He is supposed
to support her? What kind of love is
this? I would argue in fact this isn’t love,
this one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand mystery.
How to define two loves as one is the mystery.
It’s obvious to many there is a thing called God,
and just as obvious that there is one called love.
Maybe we fool ourselves, we who can’t be alone;
maybe we don’t know what either God or love is.
Maybe, and perhaps; but I for one propose
that we as only humans are not supposed
to know or understand capital-L Life, that mystery.
Isn’t it enough to know that God is
love, and love is God,
no matter which one
does or does not exist? What is life, if no love,
if no God? Maybe this saying, “God is love,”
is less a definition of God what what love is supposed
to be. Of these two terms, maybe2 the one
we should capitalize is Love, that great mystery
of chemistry and longing. Maybe “Love is god”
is a more fitting epigraph for what life is
made of: Love, that most delicate, most misty
of all emotions, is supposed to be their god,
as the one that binds us, that was, that will be, that is.