Writing in the magazine Utne recently, Nina Utne, wife of magazine founder Eric Utne (the word utne, by the way, is Norwegian for "far out" and, oddly enough, Hittite (the language of the Hittites, who lived in what is now modern Turkey) for "land"), observed that, "Love without risk isn't love at all," then goes on to say, "Our only safety lies in gratitude for the lives we share and for the miracle that we continue to love, against all odds."
     Ms. Utne's words reflect, I think, an aching truth about our world.  It is a good world, but it is a broken world.  Problems and perversion abound.  Too many of us are loathe to place our trust in anyone, anyone at all.  Even the ones we consider closest to us often, unfortunately, turn on us.  Love seems fleeting.
     Nonetheless, many of us find love, and we find it in many wonderful ways.  But we all have to give up something for it, have to let go of various degrees of personal security to embrace it fully.  It's not always safe, it's not always easy.  Yet the rewards are beyond telling.
     Why is love so risky?  Love is risky because the world is risky.  We live in a highly contingent reality; we love in acute awareness that it could all end at any moment.  So do we proceed, as did Bertrand Russell, to erect our lives upon a "scaffolding of unyielding despair"?  Or do we live acknowledging that the reason we are even able to love is that we live in a world created with abiding and lasting purpose?  We live affirming that the world is supposed to be here, and we are supposed to be here, as well, to live, to love, and to realize that we live and love because someone, someone who is love innate and incarnate, lives for and loves us.