Love & Suffering, Late Summer 2025. Transcript From Flowers in Autumn Youtube.

Can Love Exist in a World Without Suffering | C.S. Lewis | Edwin Muir | A Day At the Botanic Gardens

This episode, I think, speaks rather plainly for itself. So many elements converged without my careful arranging that I felt less like a conductor and more like someone being gently led through a piece already written. The setting at the Steamboat Springs Botanic Gardens was an unexpected gift placed in my hands. And the question at the center of it all—in its persistent,  phantom like refusal to be ignored—did not feel manufactured by me. It felt discovered. A whispered truth–uncovered.

I do not mean to suggest that life has since resolved into neat lines of black and white, nor that suffering has grown lighter in weight. It has not. But something in the revelation of its meaning–its necessity–shifted my perspective.

. . .

It was as though a child, long terrified of the dark and certain it concealed only danger, finally dared to lift her eyes. Expecting emptiness, she instead finds the night sky alive—strewn with stars, the Milky Way stretching in quiet splendor overhead, unfathomable in wonder and revelation, containing more beauty than every sunset and sunrise–beheld at once.

The darkness had not vanished. It was still night. But it was no longer void. It was filled—threaded through with light she had never paused long enough to see.

. . .

And so it has been for me. Not discovering the removal of shadow, but that even there, especially there, beauty has been waiting.

Episode 3:

Can Love Exist in a World Without Suffering | C.S. Lewis | Edwin Muir | A Day At the Botanic Gardens

(We speak often of love, as though it were a gentle easy feeling. But true love, real weight-bearing love, as far as I can see... cannot exist in a world without suffering. For true love is not an accessory to comfort, but a summons to sacrifice…)

Watch the Episode here:

https://youtu.be/8jqoCSswDNI

Have you ever been haunted by an idea?

One of life's mysteries suddenly revealed as though a curtain had been drawn back for just a moment, and you saw something essential about the nature of our existence.

I know others had come to this realization before me, but it had never struck me so clearly until a few months ago... The thought that struck me recently was this: Can love exist in a world without suffering? I don't mean love as mere affection or comfort, but real love. The kind that sacrifices, that chooses another's good over one's own, even at great cost.

And with the question came its answer almost immediately… No, it cannot…

We speak often of love as though it were a gentle, easy feeling, but true love, real weight bearing love, as far as I can see, can not exist in a world without suffering. For true love is not an accessory to comfort, but a summons to sacrifice. A world without suffering might seem ideal to human sensibilities, but it would leave no room for redemptive love, no stage for sacrifice.

God, in his infinite wisdom, has permitted suffering, not as an end in itself but, as the very context in which love is proved, refined and made visible. If we long for a love that is more than sentiment, we must also accept the suffering that makes such love possible.

As CS Lewis said, “To love it all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be rung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

. . .

My husband and I recently celebrated our anniversary, which brought with it a natural moment of reflection, not only on our shared love and life over the past 14 years, but on all that I have learned of love this past bittersweet season of my life.

It is not just our story that I carry, but countless others. Of all the epic tales of love that have shaped and stayed with us, what would become of their meaning if that love had not been tested, refined, and proven under trial? Even the lighter tales, the ones filled with humor and whimsy, carried the common thread. They move us because we know deep down that without sacrifice, their wonder is reduced to sentiment.

Sacrifice is the place where the will is tested. A place where we choose, not simply to feel affection, but to bear the weight of another. Without this risk–the willingness to be wounded–love is robbed of both its power and its glory.

. . .

Since beginning this journey into the meaning of suffering, I stumbled upon a poem, beautiful in itself, but made all the more striking by the hour of its arrival. It seemed in both word and weight to speak directly into the very theme that had been pressing on my heart. I will try to do it justice here:

One Foot in Eden

by Edwin Muir

One foot in Eden still, I stand

And look across the other land.

The world's great day is growing late,

Yet strange these fields that we have planted

So long with crops of love and hate.

Time's handiworks by time are haunted,

And nothing now can separate

The corn and tares compactly grown.

The armorial weed in stillness bound

About the stalk; these are our own.

Evil and good stand thick around

In the fields of charity and sin

Where we shall lead our harvest in.

Yet still from Eden springs the root

As clean as on the starting day.

Time takes the foliage and the fruit

And burns the archetypal leaf

To shapes of terror and of grief

Scattered along the winter way.

But famished field and blackened tree

Bear flowers in Eden never known.

Blossoms of grief and charity

Bloom in these darkened fields alone.

What had Eden ever to say

Of hope and faith and pity and love

Until was buried all its day

And memory found its treasure trove?

Strange blessings never in Paradise

Fall from these beclouded skies.

In this fallen world, where we have real things to lose, sacrifice is not theoretical. It is tangible. It has a weight and a meaning. And it is precisely in that reality that love is most clearly revealed. It is in that reality that Christ was born. Not simply to walk among us, but to die for us.

Willingness to give of oneself, and to lay down one's life if necessary–that is the pattern that true love follows…

Because that is the kind of love that God has shown to us.

“Love is like a trickling rill that runs from the rivers back into the sea.”

C.H. Spurgeon

Home is Behind Summer 2025. Original Photography.

~Verses for additional reflection~

Further Reading:

We love him, because he first loved us.

1 John 4:19

• God's Initiative: The phrase "he first loved us" emphasizes that God loved humanity while they were still sinners, before any human effort to love Him.

• The Source of Love: This verse serves as a reminder that the capacity to love originates from God. It is His "effectual love" that changes hearts, making them capable of returning that love.

• Response to Grace: Our love for God is a response to the grace and mercy shown through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is mentioned earlier in 1 John 4:10.

• Application to Others: In the surrounding verses (1 John 4:20-21), this concept is extended to show that loving God is inseparable from loving one's neighbor. Because God has loved us first, we are commanded to pass that love on to others.