15 Hours: Lifetime Of Love

Love goes on, and on.

Love, permitted to enter the world, never fails and never ends.

God is Love. When we permit new life to enter into the world, we permit ourselves to feel newly-minted love. We permit God to come in, again, to the world – in the form of love.

And when we do not permit it to come, what then?

I wrote in this post:

Does our pride or our bashfulness make it difficult for others to gift us? In all of these ways, when we inhibit gift-giving, we get in the way of simple goodness working in the world, and spreading outward.

When our pride, or our insecurity, or our fear, or our selfishness does not permit God to gift us – does not permit this love to come into the world, and into our hearts- what happens to the world? What happens to us? If we stop life and love from working in the world, spreading outward, what have we done? And who is gladdened by it?

Love never fails and it never ends. But we fail, often, in our loving -usually because we are frightened, or insecure, or prideful.

I have never had an abortion, but I have stopped love from spreading outward in my own ways, always the failure to love has been rooted in my own hangup, my own pride or fear. I fail in love from a lack of trust.

I think that’s the case for many people who choose not to give life to a child who has been diagnosed with something deadly, or even with something not deadly, but challenging; they’re fearful, lacking trust.

And so they reject the love; they don’t let it come.

And that is a tragedy for the child. But it is a greater tragedy for the parents, and yes, for the whole world. Because it is love that sustains humanity; it’s the lack of love that will kill it.

Friend Shana directed me toward this very moving eulogy for an infant girl who was loved into being, loved into existence, loved as her brief flame burned, and will be loved forever.

Because love never fails. It never ends.

The Talmud says, “who saves a life saves the world entire.” Perhaps little Vivian’s brief time here -and the love she brought, and that lives still- will help save us.

Writes Vivian’s father:

Vivian would live for a little over 15 hours. In that short, sweet time, she taught us much about herself. She liked rocking in the rocking chair. She blew bubbles and made precious baby noises, one of which sounded exactly like “Mommy.” She cooed and rooted and tried to nurse. She didn’t seem to mind being held by multiple people, but she clearly preferred the touch and embrace of her mother. . .

In the early morning hours her breathing became more irregular and her heart-rate increased. She struggled, but she made no expression of pain or misery. Her look and utterances were more like those of an athlete who knows she’s nearing the end of her energy, knows she lacks the energy to see her to her goal, but runs on, determined to give everything. Neither my wife nor I will ever forget those last moments of her life as we held her in our arms and wept and consoled her with insufficient words. We knew when we had reached the point of no return. We held Vivian and held our breath as Vivian, holding her rosary, breathed her last breath. Her soul left her body, her body ceased its animation and relaxed as if in slow motion, and her life concluded like a soft, peaceful end of a sad, glorious song.

Do read it all. And then ponder: What is lacking in our pro-life rhetoric? Can we not find a more effective way than “Abortion is murder” to explain to the world why it is good to give life, good for the whole world -and why it is evil to take it, or end it, or stop it from developing?

Perhaps if people understood the constancy and power of the love they were unleashing into the world -and into their own lives- (even if the circumstances are hard, even if they are painful or frightening) and if they really understood the words “Do not be afraid,” and why the angels speak them, the cause would be won.

The language of love, of trust -the language of the angels- that is the language we need to learn to speak.

I wish my own harsh tongue would be the first to learn this language.