volatile violet valentine

"You cannot save people, you can only love them." - The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

I don't know the context from which the above quote was taken which makes it easy to attribute to it my own context. Yet maybe this is the type of quote that needs no context for the statement itself is its context. "You cannot save people, you can only love them." All alone the sentence implies so much; timely experience, wisdom gained from error, knowledge coming from pain, heartbreak perhaps, a resigning acceptance to an uncomfortable truth which once accepted bringing a type of peace, like a release from a weighing burden. All this I see in these nine words.

Is the statement true? Is saving people not something we're capable of? Doesn't loving someone imply by default a desire if not a willingness to save them? Can you really love someone and not desire to save them; save them from danger, save them from hurt, save them from regret, even at times save them from themselves? Are desires for saving necessary even if ultimate saving itself isn't up to us? The questions could go on and on with many answers or with none.

Upon thought it occurred to me that the word save can have two meanings: save as in rescue or save as in store up. It gives new meaning to the first half of the sentence, "You cannot save people"; you cannot store up people, hold people in reserve for personal use, no matter what the reason. Unlike an organism suspended in formaldehyde for preservation, people aren't meant to be stored/saved up. Unlike a shirt or a pen bought at a half price sale, people aren't meant to be reduced and bargained. People are meant to be actively, presently, continually loved; love existing in past memory but not current reality is an impossibility perhaps. Maybe that is the meaning...I don't know.

The statement "You cannot save people, you can only love them" takes on new meaning when applied to Christ; for loving is all tied into the saving. In the end I hold that though I myself can save no one, I can help them; because I love them I can help them and anything less is not love it's hypocrisy. Help them eternally and presently, spiritually and physically, individually and relationally. Without care, concern, and active affection, theere is no love.

Where red meets blue there's violet; where love meets care there's Christ. Can you see that? God tell me you see it.