If we could imagine the love of one who loves men purely for their own sake, and not because of any need or desire of his own, purely desires their good, and yet loves them wholly, not for what at this moment they are, but for what he knows he can make of them because he made them, then we should have in our minds some true image of the love of the Father and Creator of mankind.

O. C. Quick

 

For when I said ‘I love you’ this is what I meant.

I waste my love in tears for the pain of sex

And men who waste it with the hatred of women

I cry for the lost souls of those who have forgotten

And when I promise you

That heart is carved in stone

With the toil of my hands that meant every word.

I sing my loves in gods wind for

my words are mistaken.

In prides and childish games

I have grown up in the realisation

That my childhood love was always real

Like the blood that keeps me here

like the desire to learn

I was meant to love

We are meant to love each other.

No trial set me will diminish my responsibility

To love you all.

I will love till the hatred batters me dead

And I will be reborn

Again

I loved a beggar on the street

I loved a man so proud he was his own very meat

I loved the laughter from the kids in the street

I loved the devil himself

Just as God does.

And those who cannot.

Laugh with scorn

And their mockery resounds the walls of Jericho

In echo

Of ancient disease

I love you

And I love the bones of the dead men

That tried to kill me.

Love.

Eros, philia, a secondary

Pathos. Death driven, I laugh at you like a mirror.

Agape

My love everlasting.

I am nothing

Without you.

 

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love (agape) your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love (agape) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?

—Matthew 5:43-46,