The Garden Without Thorns: Cultivating True Love

38.  If love is long-suffering and kind (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4), a man who is contentious and malicious clearly alienates himself from love. And he who is alienated from love is alienated from God, for God is love.

St. Maximus the Confessor Four Hundred Centuries on Love: #36

In the garden of the spirit, love is the most exquisite bloom, its petals unfolding with patience and its fragrance imbued with kindness. It’s like the quiet strength of the old oak, offering shade to all who seek refuge beneath its branches, never asking why they are late or what kept them away.

But imagine, amidst this verdant landscape, a shrub that grows thorns instead of flowers. Its branches are gnarled with contention, its leaves seep with malice. This shrub does not welcome or shelter; it scratches and wounds. It stands in stark contrast to the nurturing presence of love, for it is the embodiment of discord and spite.

Those who cultivate such thorns in their hearts walk a path divergent from love’s tender offerings. They are like gardeners who, instead of nurturing the soil to yield a bountiful harvest, sow seeds of bitterness that poison the land. As they wield the spade of strife, they carve a chasm between themselves and the gentle warmth of love.

And since love is the very essence of the Divine, to stray from it is to wander far from God’s embrace. For God is akin to a boundless sea of love, where each wave that caresses the shore is a soft whisper of divine affection. To turn away from love is to turn away from this ocean, to find oneself in a barren desert where the whispers of God seem distant and faint.

Thus, to live in true communion with God is to tend to the garden of our hearts, uprooting the brambles of hostility and planting, in their stead, seeds of long-suffering and kindness. It is to water these seeds with the understanding that love’s true nature is a sanctuary of peace and goodwill.

In the symphony of existence, every act of patience is a note that harmonizes with the divine melody, and every gesture of kindness is a lyric in the song of creation. To be contentious and malicious is to play a discordant note, to introduce a clash that reverberates through the soul, disturbing the celestial chorus.

Therefore, let us each strive to be gardeners of love, cultivating a spirit that blooms with patience and kindness, that welcomes all into its shade, and that mirrors the love of God in every thought, word, and deed. For in this reflection, we draw nearer not only to our own divine potential but also to the very heart of God, who is love itself.