Love

David K. Reynolds in Playing Ball on Running Water describes love this way: "To love is to lose ourselves in another. It is to give up ourselves for another, to abandon our former dreams as a sacrifice for another, to merge with that loved element of our environment. In other words, genuine love causes us to become part of our surroundings." Reynold, a Moritist practitioner, wrote these words in 1984 (p.49). True enough, I suppose. Love, from this point of view, says nothing about the 'quality' of the love object. I can say that Hitler loved to murder Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the physically and mentally ill because he loved the Aryan race even more, or so he said. The love of God by Christians is a complete denial of individuality and self-esteem. It is the subsumption of the individual in the collective (God). It is complete self-effacement. But of course this is impossible because even love requires some sense of self-worth; otherwise what value would one be to the collective? How is a useless thing of value to God? So a sense of self-worth is essential before it can be partially given up. We dance between self-aggrandizement and self-effacement, between individuality and collectivity.