A few thoughts on Life and Love

[jackofallgeeks]

So, I was at Mass this morning, and during his homily the priest made a reference to a poem by William Blake, "The Little Black Boy." In particular, he noted that in the poem the black boy's mother says, "And we are put on earth a little space/That we may learn to bear the beams of love," and he went on to explain that the meaning of life, as he believes and as Blake puts it, is to experience love.

I think that through his homily he had the right idea, but when he stated his conclusion he missed the mark; I think he misinterpreted "bear the beams of love." I'm no English major, I've never seen the poem before, and I certainly never spoke to Blake himself, but I don't think the sense is meant to be "experience the rays of love" but rather, "to uphold the structure of love." It says a couple things about me, I guess. First, that I think life is meant to be active, not passive; we aren't meant to just experience things, but to be a part of them, to do things. If we're all just sitting back experiencing love, who's the one providing it? But it also speaks to the fact that I think love is hard, that it takes effort to love and, in fact, that it takes effort to be loved.

Analyze me through that as you wish, but I think it holds.

Comments

[otakulk.livejournal.com]

I agree, I think he got it wrong. Though more and more I find that homilies arn't nearly as inspirational or thoughtful as I think they should be. ::Queue quote from The Boondock Saints:: Now that was a good homily! I think that priests should have to take storytelling classes as part of seminary school. I am sure they do public speaking, but they need to learn how to make it mean something. I find homilies kind of dry. There are basically three kinds I have found:

1) Lets analyze todays gospel, not really analyze it though, just a top layer analysis Dan Brown Style.
2) With today's internet god is disappearing
3) I once met a man who was tired with his marriage, he had to find god....

Needless to say, it get a bit boring. Father Duffy tells the same story each year at Christimas Eve mass at Saint Judes. He was on a bus to Wilkes-Barre.... Anyway, its a huge joke in our family. Then, more recently, I realized that the other priests repeated homilies as well. Now this is all fine and good, if they were good to begin with, by all means milk your good material, but only if its a healthy cow.