I'm taking a break from the travelogue here to bring up an item from the reading for my summer school class. One of the authors, Richard Sanders, in his "The God Who Risks", is discussing love between persons, and offers these characteristics of it:
1) limitless (but conditioned by the ability of the other to receive it),
2) precarious (because it does not control the other),
3) vulnerable (because it may not get its way), and
4) desirous (of reciprocation, of mutuality)
Some explanation is needed of the first term. By limitless, he means "unlimited concern for the other", as in the lover desiring to give all for the beloved. Kindness may have limits, but love does not. Love is willing to give all, because the lover is focused on bringing great good to the beloved. However, love also respects the personhood of the beloved and works within the conditions of the relationship and with the limitations of the beloved.
The argument of this book is that this is also how God loves, but perfectly. God takes risks in loving us, and at the same time allows us free will. If we as the beloved do not have free will, then we can't freely reciprocate the love of God, which is ultimately what God wants to have with us - a mutual relationship of love.
I can relate to this. In theory and in practice.
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