Regular readers of this blog will know that I use a weekly quotation as inspiration for it. And it is rare for me to disagree with the writers, poets, artists, philosophers and theologians chosen by the compilers of the Harenberg Calendars. But this week I do. The quote is by German writer and poet, Heinrich Heine, "Love requires freedom in order to exist and flourish."
No, it doesn't. Love is the greatest power in the world. It is stronger than fear, stronger than hate, stronger than anything. I believe that Love is God's presence at the centre of everything. And I believe that in the end, it will ultimately prevail.
Some may think that this is ridiculously naive, stupidly optimistic. And if we look around at our world, they may have a point. Yet in the darkest places, the most hopeless times, something gives people the strength to resist evil, the power to carry on when bad things happen. I believe that thing is Love.
I believe that Love is a real power in the world. Which has been proclaimed down the centuries. We only have to read St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians, in which he speaks of the power of Love:
"If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It doesn not insist on its its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease: as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."
So no, Heine, love does not require freedom in order to exist and flourish: it is the most poweful force in the world.
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