Two on Love

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (1960)


To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket --safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (1960)

_______________________

On this day (catching up):

Sept. 10 1905 George MacDonald, whose writings greatly influenced Lewis, dies at age eighty.

Sept. 10 1956 Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is published by Geoffrey Bles, London.

_______________________

Note to readers: Yes, I know the second quotation is a repeat--I think a classic bears repeating once in awhile. ~Arevanye