The word that defines God, that carries through when all the others have stumbled and fallen, is love. Love is God's essence, and prefaces everything else that can be said. God is love.

The word itself is, of course, sloppy. The Mindbenders have used it to sell chocolate and perfume. Teenagers are convinced that the rush of hormones flooding their budding bodies is love. Pulp novelists produce swamps of emotional slush that they casually describe as love stories. Politicians appeal to love of country when the war economy is at low ebb. Lonely people use each other's bodies, faking love by making love. Love as been emptied of meaning, trivialized like Bach played on the kazoo.

Nevertheless, genuine love exists. Those who have been ravaged by it find it disappointing to be left with no other word to use fro the storm in their spirit. It is perhaps easier to take hate and reverse it than to allow the flaccidity of '"love" to continue to mislead. However, we are left with it. God is love. Love in its uncut form is to be found in God. The river of love between two people is at its deepest point an intimation of the heart of God. But it is still only an intimation, the snatch of a sax solo carried on the night.

Mike Riddell, Godzone by Mikel Riddell