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Most of my adult life I have learned to be logical in my choices.

Now, however, it is logic itself that I am doubting.

You hear people saying ‘everything happens for a reason’, and so they attach a reason to things.

Reason is not the explanation. It’s a face-saving gimmick we humans import to cover up our failure to think in any other terms except cause-and-effect.

Why do colours splosh about among flowers? Remember the poem, “… Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air”.

Nonsense!

All those flowers are seen by other flowers and lots of other creatures who like to see and brush against and contrast and celebrate those jazzy petals!

There is a place in the USA called Death Valley, where nothing ever grows in the sandy patch – except that every few years, it rains.

Then a sea of dazzling yellow flowers flood the patch for a few days.

Where were the seeds all this time?

Where did they come out of in the first place?

And why come out anyway?

Everything that moves makes noise.

Why?

Because the entire cosmos is love made visible, audible, smellable, tangible, sensible — communicable.

Why?

Because that’s the way love is!

It is always saying “I love you!” in one way or another because love is like that.

When you read the holy books, you’re inclined to say “Back off!” when the verses gush about God.

But that’s because the writer had to say something bubbling up inside her/himself! She/he had or was having this extraordinary experience of divine love.

Hence the poetry and the excitement.

Love – it’s what everything, everything is about

But where did the “bubbling” come from in the first place?

Now you’re talking in circles – it came because that’s the way love is, it has to communicate, the same as water has to seek its own level, hot air to rise, and so on.

Love is the final cause of everything.

And not just your love my love dad’s love mum’s love… even the tree’s love the bird’s love the caterpillar’s love the elephant’s love… the wind’s love the rain’s love the night’s love the winter’s love – it’s what everything, everything is about.

Isn’t language funny?

We never ‘fall in hate’ or ‘fall in fear’ or ‘fall in joy’– no; we have other verbs for all these.

But for ‘fall in love’ – that’s what we’ve got.

Always fall.

We don’t decide whether I shall love this guy or this girl. We can pretend, of course; we can be seduced, of course, all that is so. But the actual whoosh – there’s the word. Fall.

You’ve been there yourself.

Hopefully, still are.

And not necessarily with a person.

Language itself – all the bits of languages I know anyway – have this special word for the experience of love.

So what am I on about today?

I am on about the irrationality of the most important of our human experiences.

That’s the territory where inspiration happens, where wonder happens, where creativity happens. Hey, they’re all ‘super’ words.

Exactly – and these, these are roads we find ourselves on when we experience the marvel of ourselves, the amazing being I am.

Try not to get so wearily logical, and celebrate that often logic has nothing to do with it.

We sometimes force a logical explanation.

No: celebrate the mystery that you are, the centre of all full loving.

That someone loves you is the biggest thrill of your life. This is the visibility, the tangibility, of God.

Not a ‘dimension,’ an identity.

And that ‘love’ that I’m on about – it’s the cosmos, the constellations, the multiverse: use all the words you like.

It’s you, yourself.

Congratulations.

God bless.

• Brendan MacCarthaigh is a Christian Brother from Dublin working in India.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

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