I have some words going round my brain at the moment: “It is
I whom you love.” I didn’t make this phrase up; I got it from another woman.
Perhaps she heard it from another woman as well. I would ask her, except that
she’s been dead for 700 years. I do know that she wasn’t writing these words about
herself.
It is I whom you love.
The first time I came across those words, I felt like the
blood stopped flowing through my veins. Time stood still for a moment and my heart seemed to swell.
It is I whom you love.
I guess the woman who’s been dead 700 years wrote those
words down because they had a similar effect on her. It was a moment when a
thousand other moments come together into one, and suddenly make sense.
I had one of those other moments this week. With my husband
three and a half thousand miles away, I was staying with family but feeling alone
and run down. The children and I all had colds. I came down to breakfast to
find presents for my middle boy, who turned three this month. And there, on top
of his pile of blue and green wrapped boxes, was a MAC bag. A black MAC bag.
No-one buys MAC make-up for a three year old boy. No, this present was for me.
I started grinning like an idiot before I’d even opened it. It came with a
lovely card from my sister, with some lovely words inside that made me want to
cry. Somewhere under all the parental responsibilities and holding it together
and just keeping going someone had found… me. Oh thank you,
thank you! I had felt lost, but inside a black MAC bag was compassion and
kindness and being known - the gift of being found.
It is I whom you love.
Yesterday I was at a conference for Christians. I am feeling
a little at odds with my religion at the moment, so this wasn’t the easiest
place to be. But, we had a great barbecue with friends and cooked sausages in
the sunshine while the children played with pointy sticks and ate too many
donuts. After a few hours of these simple pleasures, we left. On the long walk
back to the car, we adults talked. We talked about the frustrations of feeling
out of sorts with our religion. It made me feel a bit alone. And then suddenly, breaking into the sky with
a roar, came the Red Arrows. “Look, boys! RED ARROWS!” If you’ve ever seen the
Red Arrows loop and twist through the air over your head, you’ll know it’s an
awesome sight. You just have to stop in your tracks and watch. The power, the
precision and the beauty are breath taking. I really did hold my breath as
they climbed in formation, then dived together as though they were falling,
falling, falling, before peeling off and looping up again in big joyful red
swooshes. I let the surprise and the beauty and the joy and the power wash over
me and through me. I had been found again. Surprise. Beauty. Joy. Power.
It is I whom you love.
I read online a couple of months ago about a young man who
was overheard by his parents, whilst on the phone to his boyfriend. They were planning
how he might tell his parents that he is gay. Having heard the phone
conversation, the father got there first. “The
only thing I need you to plan,” he wrote, “is to bring home OJ and bread after class… I’ve known you were gay
since you were six. I’ve loved you since you were born.” How can so few
words carry so much tenderness, acceptance, compassion, knowing and love, and bestow so
much worth? They’re just words. And yet they carry something so profoundly
beautiful in them that it makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Whatever it is that those words carry, it feels timeless, heavy but light,
serious but smiling, tender but strong – all these qualities shimmering
together. There’s something about this peculiar mix-up of characteristics that I
love. It feels somehow… alive.
It is I whom you love.
The black MAC bag. The Red Arrows. A father’s note to his
son. Within each of these things came something else. Something enduring,
alluring, that can’t be grasped with my hands and yet can settle in my heart,
stirring within me something that feels like warmth, or maybe it’s light, or
maybe it’s love. I am not alone in this strange universe. My life has been
interrupted by many of these moments, where something else breaks in. The
moments themselves are usually unremarkable. And yet within them, is something
ever so courteous and gentle, something ever so strong and safe, something ever
so serious and mischievous and funny. If it had a sound I think it would be
deep and musical and roaring and laughing. And as it built to a great
crescendo, I would hear it most clearly: Whatever this something is, whatever is
noble, courteous, true, compassionate, loving, strong, heart-stirring, life-giving,
hope-building, joy-bringing, worth-bestowing, whatever draws your heart: It is I. It is all I. It is I whom you
love.
Back in the Dark Ages a woman living in solitude heard a
whisper in her soul and wrote it down. Seven hundred years on, those same words
linger in my mind too. Who is the I who
first breathed those words? This becomes my quest: To know the I who speaks them, through sunsets and
dewdrops and mercy and births and deaths and kindness in the face of evil and sacrifice
in the face of suffering and stories of romance and science and art and letters
from fathers and Red Arrows and a gift of make-up. I have heard the whisper and the gentle
knocking on the door of my life.
So yes, come in, you whom I love.
