Love: The great rebellion against death and time

Source: When poetry touches eternity

"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as fierce as death, jealousy as harsh as the grave... Vast waters cannot extinguish love, and rivers cannot wash it away."

(Song of Songs 8:6-7)

Explanation: The force that unites versus the force that divides

It is hard to think of more beautiful lines of poetry in the history of literature. Love is framed here as the only force in the universe that rivals death. Death is a force of separation and chaos (entropy); love is a force of connection and unity. The verse does not say that love is "sweet," but that it is "fierce" and "harsh." It is an immense, total energy that survives the destruction of the body.

Perspective: Love as an existential rebellion

Maybe, in the end, the cynics are wrong and the mystics are right. Indeed, as we have seen this week, biology tricks us and psychology entangles us, but there is a core to love that resists scientific reduction. In a world where everything is fleeting, where everything breaks down and erodes, love is the great rebellion. It is the refusal to accept death as the final word. When a person truly loves, they touch eternity, because they step outside of time. Love is perhaps the only thing sufficient to justify our existence in the world.

Going Deeper: Death by a kiss and quantum entanglement

The Talmud (Moed Katan 28a) describes the moment the soul departs from Moses (and from other righteous individuals) as "death by a kiss." Death is not oblivion, but the climax of an erotic union between the soul and the Divine. In the terms of modern physics, one might think of this through the concept of "quantum entanglement": two particles that have interacted continue to affect each other instantaneously even if separated by light-years. The bond of the soul—which believers hold descended from heaven—is stronger than space and time. They were never truly separated. And now, as the soul has ascended to the celestial realms, it remains entangled with the soul of the beloved left behind.

Culture: Two who are one: The Arnolfini wedding

In a famous painting by the 15th-century Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, the marriage of the couple Giovanna and Giovanni Arnolfini is depicted. The entire painting is preoccupied with two who are one: only a single candle burns, depictions of Christian saints surround them, fruit hints at fertility, the setting is a bedroom rather than a wedding canopy in a church, Giovanni's hand is raised in an oath, and more. An eternal covenant.