Thoughts on Love 1: The Trouble with Peanut-Butter-Milkshake Theology

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

Let’s talk about love.

You’ve probably already assumed that I’m not talking about fluffy romance – in which case, well done, reader, gold star for you. Nor am I talking about the whole plethora of things English-speakers say we ‘love’ without really meaning more than a casual fondness. For instance, I love peanut butter milkshakes,¹ vintage dresses, and The Fairly OddParents² – but that’s not the kind of love I’m talking about

The kind of love I’m talking about rather defies visual representation, but this photo nonetheless seemed an apt one to have on my blog.

I’m talking about the kind of love that prompts a person to die for it.

Now, that’s a big, complex, uncomfortable topic, and I’ve had a busy week, so to kick off what I intend to be something of a miniseries over the next few weeks, I’m afraid I’m going to subject you to more of my poetry. In fact, this is a particularly objectionable specimen, firstly because it’s one of what I call my ‘deep ones’, and secondly because, when I wrote it a few years ago, I bestowed it with the ludicrously pretentious title of ‘This One Spilled Like Exhausted Tears’ – so do feel free to get out while you can.

Still here? Why, thank you. How encouraging.

Here’s the thing: I use the exact same vocabulary and syntax to say, “I love peanut butter milkshakes,” as I do to say, “I love God.” Subject, verb, object. Yet, there is infinite difference between what I actually mean by these two statements, or at least there certainly ought to be. The following poem was born out of a concern, essentially, that I treat God rather too much like a peanut butter milkshake:³ I expect to enjoy him on my own terms, and so the love I profess for him acquires the woefully small and superficial peanut-butter-milkshake meaning of the word.⁴

I hope you like it; it’s rather a personal one.

“I love you,” and, frankly, it sounds like a lie,

Like a sugar-spun shell that’s got nothing inside.

I, naïve, carry on as if nothing’s awry,

But love’s not just a feeling, but something applied,

And, while your love is bursting, impassioned and bright,

An unrestrained, all-quenching flow, meanwhile, mine

Is a flickering signal, an unsteady light.

I’m complacent and weak and I hate it. Confine

Me to prisons I built, I’ll deserve it precise-

Ly, deserve sanction fitting and full for my crimes.

Most detestable is that it’s not once or twice,

But again and again and again, countless times.

I give up. I stay down. I don’t bother to try.

Though I know you’re worth everything, all of my life,

I surrender. I flee. God, it sounds like a lie,

“I love you,” when my hand was holding the knife,

When I was the crowd shouting out, “Crucify!”

I was wood. I was nail. I was spear in your side,

And I think it’s beyond me why you chose to die

At what should have been my execution. I’ve cried

At the glory and love of it all, time to time,

And I’ve hated my weakness, distraction and pride.

One cannot trust the words of a traitor, and I’m

Sometimes almost in love with the monsters inside,

But you know me from here to forever; despite

Everything, I’m considered not traitor, but child,

And I cling to this truth: you and I, we’re all right.

You gave everything so we might be reconciled.

You, Creator and King of the universe, died,

And it seems that you did so with me as your prize,

So you’ll hardly let go of me now! I decide:

I love you – for how could I do otherwise?

Footnotes

¹ My university Students’ Guild runs an American-style diner that does rather good ones. https://www.exeterguild.org/grovediner/

² If you didn’t know, it’s a cartoon about a ten-year-old boy who secretly has a pair of fairy godparents able to grant his every wish. Hilarity ensues. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA8OH52te7LLg_O9T7lZFEA

³ It occurs to me that that sounds extremely odd out of context. Indeed, it sounds fairly bizarre even in context...

⁴ Only upon re-watching this Blimey Cow video from some years ago,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iv62bxFTW0, did I realise how much of what I just expressed is included in it. I can only assume Blimey Cow has had a more penetrating influence on me than I thought. Still, I think this acknowledgement and the link to the video should clear me of accusations of plagiarism.