By now, what was left of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's earthly body is ashes.  Only his writing remains.  And it is remarkable.  It's also poignant.  In a collection of letters which his wife, Liu Xia, hopes to publish in the West, Liu writes of his love for her.  My love, he writes, is a "love as intense as ice, love as remote as blackness."
     In no way can I hope to step into Liu's world, to fully understand why he wrote these words.  His was a life of challenges which I doubt very much I will ever experience.  Yet in his words I see the unbridled power of human love, a profound love that shone through all else he endured.  Consider ice. Translucent even while it is, when sufficiently thick, virtually unbreakable, ice is intense: clear, firm, unyielding in its grip on a snow covered lake.  Blackness towers over us, a sort of interminability, an opaque clarity without visible end.  We see it, but we rarely see through it.
     Liu's love was a love so intense that the only way to grasp it is to step into with one's eyes closed, to taste its fervor even while one cannot see or comprehend the fullness of its depths.  It can feel as present as the morning sun, it can feel as remote as the most distant sea.  But it is more real than we can imagine.
     Like, I suppose, the love of God.  Thank you, God, for the power of love.  And thank you, Jesus, for giving such love to every human being.
     Rest well, Liu.