My Zen Life: Nothing Between the Nameless & the Named: What More Can We Want?

I was talking with a friend about love.

Is love God? Is God love? Two questions. Each opens rather different doors.

We were not in complete accord. But, then, how else should it be?

That mystery is the sum of our experience. Love. Sex. Friendship. Family. That Divine Mystery. All of it. All of it swirling, tangling, untangling. Presenting. Found. Forgotten. Present. A vague intimation. Mysterious. Difficult. Always present. Always. Hard. Hard.

The master sings into our hearts:

The light came through the window
Straight from the sun above
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of love
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the nameless makes
A name for one like me
I’ll try to say a little more
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door
Then love itself
Love itself was gone
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance
I’ll try to say a little more
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door
Then love itself
Love itself was gone
Then I came back from where I’d been
My room, it looked the same
But there was nothing left between
The nameless and the name
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance
I’ll try to say a little more
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door
Then love itself
Love itself was gone
Love itself
Love itself was gone

And, of course, an echo remains. A hint. Half of a memory.

And, that for me, that echo, that half of a memory, is in fact the whole of it.

So hard.

So terrible.

So sweet.

So lovely…

Nothing between the Nameless & the Named.

Now, how can I do anything but stand before that lord of song and raise my trembling broken voice and sing my hallelujah?

It is a song to love itself…