Church of Saint Paul’s,
Here is the motto of our current world:
“What thou lovest well remains,
The rest is dross.
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee.
What thou lov’st well is the true heritage.”
It’s from a poem by Ezra Pound. And in it a new world is mapped out: it’s you. You are the world. You are the center of the universe. You are able to define what it is you love. So, what you love, you keep. It holds to you, or you to it, by the gravity of your love. You are a universe, and your love can hold within its orbit the things that it loves.
It is the world of fallen man.
And it is tragic, for it has thrust out the heart of God.
What Pound wrote is true. But it is true only of one: what He loves well remains. The rest is dross. He can hold all by the gravity of his love. And it cannot be torn away from Him.
But what does that mean for us? It means that our knowledge of love counts for nothing, all of that is dross, only what He loves well remains. The implication is then stunning, since the implication is submission. That is, we give up our understand and our attempt to hold the world together, and submit to His understanding and His gravity.
For, although Pound’s lines are nearly transcendent, the truth is you cannot hold on. You have no gravity and things hurtle away from you like a comet passing the earth.
But the Lord . . . by His love He has kept you and He will not lose you. He loves well and what He loves will not be taken from Him. And our salvation is found in submission to his love.
Tom+