Love Stands

In the absence of all, love remains

Love is a necessary characteristic of being. It's an engendered emotion, feeling, and spiritual attitude of one thing to another. We can endlessly debate whether it's a simple thought, emotion, or something ethereal. However, when we give up on quantising it every which way, we understand it to be a necessary part of our existence.

We sexualise love; we batter it about as a cheap word to toss into the night sky; we allegorise it in our racist caricatures of others; we anthropomorphise it when we discuss our pets. We've used it much in the same way as we've used the expletive "fuck;" nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. And yet, when faced with its antagonist in fear, we fall back to the rudiments upon which it was formed. 

You see, love is…a many splendoured thing (to quote a bard or two). It's as soft to our souls as a baby's bottom, the caress of a rose's petals, the wafting of fresh laundry just hung out to dry. It's as intentional and meaningful as a partner's gaze in the waning hours of daylight, as hungry as a pride of lions around a savanna watering hole gazing at the gathered wildebeest. It's as sharp as a hawberry's thorns, as wild as the buttercups growing in my paddocks, and as untamed as a newborn foal. It's all of these things to our minds, and yet…

We're fond of quoting 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings and other events. We preach the ideals of love, finding our comfort in the gentle tickle of breeze that flows through these idylls of emotion and thought. Love becomes nothing more than an aspiration, a goal to be achieved through the hard-fought trenches of relational war. 

To be loved and have lost becomes the poet's pint and pen, the muse of a thousand broken hearts on the sharp rocks of love's darkest nights. The triumph of love over the decades of unknowns, finding your true love's first kiss and the aegis of angels watching your every move. It's a beautiful stage from which to write your tales.

But love is as relentless as it is soft, as stone-faced as a granite quarry while being as delicate as a downy feather. It's concrete and steel, bolstering the side of a railway line and protecting it from even the most significant incursions. It's a fearless knight, lined up to preserve and resplendent in its muted steel and steed. 

We don't give love enough opportunity to be a rudiment for us, choosing courage, perhaps undeservedly, as our character trait of resolve. But love is behind every movement, every dance, every trench overrun, and every choice made to stand tall in the face of adversity. It's found in the 11th-hour decisions to stand down, the choices made of community over competition, and the marrow of choices to leave versus stay. We don't give enough credit to the love that pulses through the arteries and veins of those who have given everything for something, however insignificant we may feel it is.

Love stood with linked arms and demanded fair treatment, regardless of race, colour, creed, or faith. Love challenged the halls of democracy and the rule of law that dictated that men should be greater than women and that marriage was one man and a woman. Love stood resolute and chose country over convenience when all else fell apart. Love has stood in the gap, filling the voids between courage and conviction when all else failed. 

And love, my dear souls, still stands today. Will you?