The Command of Love

I wanted to post a poem I wrote a little over a month ago called "Final Theophany", but also felt the desire to preface it for some important reasons as it has come to spur a deeper intrigue and interest for me and my academic writing. The poem was originally written as a reflection on some strong feelings I'd carried for the last year around a specific woman in my life and how I had come to "interpret" or understand love in the face of my own illusions as well as the infinite/finite paradox that is inherent to our existence.

But the topic of love has become recently more interesting to me as I've been doing research in preparation for a paper I'm writing for my Christian History studies course next semester on Soren Kierkegaard.  I've become really impacted by Kierkegaard and his very profound understanding of the human experience. I've decided to focus specifically on his philosophy of Ethics and Love for this particular paper and wanted to briefly touch on his thought with you for the purpose of the favor I'm going to ask down below.

I think the most important thing about Kierkegaard was that he was first and foremost a Christian and his existential philosophy was always grounded in the fundamental responsibility of the individual and his/her relationship to God/Love. He also had a very detailed understanding of ethical/religious development and the different stages of life including the struggles of individuation (existential fear and trembling), and on toward the process of transcending the self (Leap of Faith) that was necessary to reach the highest levels of Love's expression.

The reason I'm so interested in his work on Love is because he is a master at exposing in detail all the traps and illusions that humans face in relationship to thier experience of love as well as how we relate to our objects of love (the beloved). He sees most love relationships leading only to existential despair because we tend to try and make our beloved into the image of our ideal that only God can fulfill. And because of this we will always judge, compare and calculate the level of our partner's ability to love us. He argues that only the individual who has taken the Leap of Faith will be able to see that all calculations of how much we love compared to others is useless, for in the face of God we see that we are always in infinite debt to His Grace and that all He asks is that we love others unconditionally for Him (Yes I'm aware of the Judeo-Christian slant, but still important stuff!)

He goes on to speak of the Command of Love and our own commitment to absolute telos (our God relationship) as ultimately higher than any other familial relationship or moral duty. He argues that the command of Love offers a momentary "suspension of the ethical" in order that we might align our will with Gods. He uses the example of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a call to Absolute Love, a metaphor for the need to step beyond the love we have committed to as friends and parents etc etc. Not that that  love  does not return but it must be suspended in order to ground oneself in Faith so that all interactions become first and foremost relationships between us and God, every human must become God in our eyes before any other role, or God must become the ground of all our relationships.

I continue to feel Kierkegaard's philosophy to be extremely beneficial for illuminating different experiences and expressions of love at different levels of human development. My own interest as of late and why I'm posting all of this is because I would like to try to write an article using Kierkegaard and French feminist philosopher Luce Irigiray as grounds a for new interpretation of feminist ethics, rooted in the command of Love.  I think love is something that women especially struggle with at the level of relationships and how that Love translates and transforms at the level of Faith. Mainly I think this is because our personal relationships are so immediately present and are a big part of how we form our sense of identity. I realize this is not necessarily a new insight but I think the idea and discussion could be more thoroughly fleshed out.  I also think it's harder for women to make the existential transition and ground ourselves in the Command of Love because it looks very different from how we normally conceive care and compassion.

I'm hoping to generate some conversation on this topic here on Zaadz by posting different ideas in relation to this academic paper I would like to write. I mainly want to see if there is any interest to explore integral ethics and feminist conceptions of love in order to expand the scope of our approach to the issue of Love.  Kierkegaard himself seemed to believe that you could distinguish ones level of development based on the way that they Love. I realize this is somewhat simplistic in the face of an integral awareness that takes in the complexity of lines and types etc. but I still find the simple statement to carry a lot of beauty and truth and perhaps something I often feel left behind in many of the discussions I have  with others about second tier. 

My idea for the title is "A New Ethical Horizon for Feminism: Kierkegaard, Irigiray and the Command to Love."
I do hope this generates some discussion to keep me on this extra work as I also enter into full time courses next semester. If not... than it will also tell me that perhaps the topic is not grabbing people. Either way it will be useful information for me.

So here's the poem, again any reflections on what it brings up in relation to Love feel free to share.

Final Theophany

A gaping abyss once opened in my heart.

It illuminated my cushioned cave of pulsating heat
with every curvature designed to the shape of your feet.

A crafted Home for Love’s respite
that only Sappho came to tend at night.

 She laid herself against the cliff of my deepest yearning
and blinded any hopes for the skills of wise discerning.

It was in this private dwelling place that I would often dream of you.
The intensity of your touch scorching the secrets of my skin
a caress that always left me undressed
to a rain of butterflies descending deep within.

I would wake to feel the pleasure
of my inability to grasp the tastes of eternity.

and I would wake to feel the sadness
of this love that longed to apprehend itself through the particulars of a face.

It was in my waking that I held the paradox of pain
an emptiness that always reached out to form in vain.
My heart was clinging now to wisps of air
that I had come to mistake for the weight of my despair.

 It was this pain that was destined to enfold in on itself
before offering its cool breeze through the surrendered passageways of my broken heart.
It sang no homilie as it traveled through these sacred caverns and draped itself across the resting place I’d kept so long in secret
just for you.

It is this imprint of grief that always traces our radiance.

You see it was your soft curves that had marked the lost temples of my divine
the remembrance that had once flowed forth from you fingertips to mine.
This was my final Theophany.
A symphony so profound that it shattered sound
and rebuilt this temple on empty ground.

It was the dangerously close proximity I’d grown to Love’s possession
that had finally dissolved the walls between me and its forms of obsession.

So now I understand this gift of separation
this hallowing of heart that was my preparation
my purification.

Given new eyes no longer encased
I knew I would have to replace
the image of your face
with empty space.

And now I wake every morning only to Die
so that Love Alone might live.

 A life already given,
a heart so full that it is forever poverty stricken.

 -November 18 2006