LOVE’S WORK

The following is the text of the talk delivered by Erin Greco at the opening for Love’s Work:

We cannot see love.

This is one of the first points Kierkegaard makes in Works of Love. If we are going to believe only in the evidence of our eyes, he says that “we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love.”

And yet—

If we decide we don’t believe in love, we must explain its presence in the world. We must explain the person who is willing to have mercy on the one who has wronged them; we must explain how it is possible for a heart to be softened by suffering, rather than hardened by it.

Love is hidden, but it is not undetectable—this is Kierkegaard’s second point, that love is recognizable by its fruits. He writes:

The life of the plant is hidden;
the fruit is the manifestation.
The life of thought is hidden;
the expression of it is the manifestation.

Works of Love, Pg. 8

So it is with love.

——

I first started reading Works of Love just over a year ago, after my son (who was not yet a reader) randomly picked it off the shelf.

I was about six months in to what I’ll describe as a season of very intensive process around, among other things: family, friends, community, art, and my walk with God—and Kierkegaard’s work (as it has at other such seasons in my life) met me at a place that I desperately needed it.

In truth, it feels pretty impossible to describe the last year and a half—at times you may have caught me struggling in pain, saying I felt like I was undergoing God’s surgery; at others saying that I felt a renewed peace and underlying joy growing in me. These were both true; they are both true.

But one thread that has stayed consistent is my feeling that in this process, I have experienced the light of God’s love breaking through the darkness in a way I had never quite before.

We must proceed carefully, I think, when we begin to associate love and seasons of pain—I do not wish anyone to think of suffering as what God desires for them, that one ought to look for hardship as evidence of God’s care, or especially that harm inflicted by or on others is ever justified in the name of love.

And yet, though God’s desire is for our health and flourishing, and His love is freely given, receiving it still requires much of us—because in order to accept your Savior’s embrace, you must set down your lists, tools, and pretenses. You must be willing to understand you are beloved without having to do anything to make yourself so.

When you actually feel that—when it doesn’t just wash by your eyes and ears as a theoretical idea but enters your heart and takes root as a reality, it cannot help but begin to change you from the inside out—and change, on the whole, is painful.

Setting down the patterns of thought that grew in darkness, letting go of our weapons, tribes, and webs of certainty—it does not come easily to us. It often requires repentance; it usually involves loss; it almost certainly will bring us through grief.

Kierkegaard says that God is our educator, that His “love is the greatest leniency and the greatest rigorousness” (Pg. 377)—and one of the beautifully lenient but terribly rigorous lessons this process has brought me is a focus on the fact that we are measured by the same measure we use.

Kierkegaard says it like this:

God repeats the words of grace or of judgment that you say about another; he says the same thing word for word about you; and these same words are for you grace and judgment.

Works of Love, Pg. 384-5

There is a similar equality, I believe, between the way we talk to ourselves and the way we view others. I have found it difficult to extend true charity and compassion—which are not the same thing as excuse or license—to others if I do not extend them to myself.

Indeed, I would describe judgment of self and judgment of the other as two edges of the same blade—and it is possible to grow so accustomed to wielding it that we no longer recognize our own wounds, let alone our neighbor’s.

But love says to us: put this weapon down. Your enemies are not those made of flesh and blood. Your neighbor is a beloved creation of God—and so are you.

This is the work of Love. It is not only our work, as we choose whether to allow the hidden life of God’s love to take root within us, but God’s work, as he nurtures, guides, and transforms us.

In this way—as beings created, held, and shaped by the God who is Love—we are the Work of God. We ourselves are Love’s Work.

——

And so, the artwork you see around you was created in conversation with Kierkegaard, yes—but it was also pressed out of my own season of intense process, born of a desire to externalize my emotions and experiences while giving honor to the Creator who I believe worked His purposes through it all.

In truth, I created it for myself, but I hope there is something for you in it—some beauty, some resonance, some opportunity for reflection or process of your own.

But whether or not you find that here, I am grateful for your presence, and your witness.

Thank you.