I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
Loyalty is not a passive, negative guardianship of the gate-- loyalty arises from the complete & utter opening & subsequent blazing forth of one's inner life. It is an active, determined desire that demands total self-awareness & deliberate engagement.
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Loyalty is not a passive, negative guardianship of the gate-- loyalty arises from the complete & utter opening & subsequent blazing forth of one's inner life. It is an active, determined desire that demands total self-awareness & deliberate engagement.
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It was quite a wedding and as I stood there watching I realized something I'd forgotten a long time ago. Sometimes in life there really are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what. Maybe you will find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding. But there's also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you sometimes better than you know yourself is the same person who's been standing beside you all along.
I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn__ think so. And then I wondered: Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life?I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn__ quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me. But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.
Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.
What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it.
You will know it is love when the need can't be met by yourself or God.