Love for the Good at Hand

[susanstinson]

I quoted this yesterday in an email to a friend, and keep thinking about it.


Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love--love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness.

Wendell Berry, from Standing By Words

Comments

[aboutlooking.livejournal.com]

thank you for sharing this.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

My pleasure.

[geeksdoitbetter.livejournal.com]

would you mind explaining irremediable?

[fattest.livejournal.com]

I recently read an interview with Wendell Berry in the Sun (http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/391/digging_in). My favorite quote:

...like religion, love has to be practiced. It has to find something to do. Love isn’t just a feeling. It’s an instruction: Love one another. That’s hard to do. It doesn’t mean to sit at home and have fond feelings. You’ve got to treat people as if you love them, whether you do or not.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh. "Love one another. That's hard to do." Right. I've got to check out that interview.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Well, truth is, I'm not totally sure, but, without looking it up, I read it as a loneliness that can't be redeemed or mediated. The present mediates everything with its insistent specifics, its surfaces and edges, you know? Skinning our hands against the rough parts is one way we know it's love.