The book of love is long and boring

I just discovered this song.
It blows me away.

In part, because of it's truthfulness,
in part because of it's brevity.
In whole, because of those two things together
(powerful!)
and the weird melody that is like an arrow to the heart
on which the truth is carried.

Even though the video portrays the song to be about long romances, I immediately thought of it in the context of parenting a difficult child. I thought of it in the context of LIFE

I couldn't say it better even with a thousand words.

Yet, I'm blown away.

That makes me want to talk about it, because it's a truth about love that is unpopular or unknown to younger generations, and maybe some who aren't so young, but who have been poisoned by happily ever after and post-modernistic thinking, weariness and...
boredom.

"The book of love is long and boring.
No one can lift the d--- thing.
It's full of charts and facts and figures, 

and instructions for dancing.

But I, I love it when you read to me."

1

I love that he admits to the difficulty and monotony inherent in love
--the charts, facts and figures--
whether it be in marriage, parenting or the span of a life.

2

I love that it--the long, boring, "full of facts and figures" text of love includes instructions for dancing. As a person who grew up in a religion that opposed dancing in any form, I am only recently beginning to understand the power of dancing. I'm actually taking lessons with my husband! I grieve a little when I think of how much I missed not dancing all these years.

Dancing is itself starts with charts and rules and the need for practice and grace...the Jesus-kind for stepped-on toes and the Gene Kelley-kind for rigid, rule-following bodies.

I love the juxtaposition of music, dancing,
(and whichever kind of grace you find in it),
with the
mundane
 that--in the end--is somehow worth singing about.

When you see the old couples, you know it's been long and--at times--boring, but it makes you want to find the love in your own mundane, to go the distance through the actual book of love, not the Disney version.

Ballroom dancing (at least) doesn't even begin to start looking graceful until you've mastered the steps, but it can be fun long before that if you don't care what other people think.

3

I love that in one fell swoop he encompasses the magic
and the absurdity of love and our attempts to express it:

"The book of love has music in it

In fact that's where music comes from

Some of it's just transcendental

Some of it's just really dumb"

4

And I really love the notion that the book of love is full of
"things we're all too young to know."

Seriously.

Love and its expressions,
Our ideas about it and our feeble attempts to do it..

We're in over our heads on this one. Even at our best, we really don't have a clue about the magnitude of love. God's love already blows us away even in it's mysterious form, but just imagine when we see it UNVEILED!!!

In the meantime...

Love is, ultimately, a story with all the highs and lows of a fairy tale. All the magical potions and ogres under the bridge, which we handle fairly well because of the call to action they include and the exhilaration or adrenalin that makes us feel alive.

It's those long, inevitable, boring stretches in between that cause us to question whether we're in a good story of love. And maybe it is precisely in those times that we need to pull out our dancing shoes and make some music, even if it's just really dumb.

Dance in the rain with the toddler who, at 3, still hasn't made it through the day dry yet and who you fear never will.

Embrace the teenager who is failing English and whose room smells like your worst nightmare, even if he doesn't want your embrace, and surprise him by smiling rather than smiting your head in frustration.

Klutz around the dance studio floor with a spouse you think you're almost done with, laughing and learning at the reflection of your relationship that is revealed in your dance. Trust that some of those issues can be worked out on the dance floor...with words, without counseling, without tears.

Sing at the top of your lungs in the shower or the car because you have a shower or a car.

Don't miss another divine moment because it "looks like an inconvenience on the front end."
(Erwin McManus, Chasing Daylight)

Above all, embrace the fact that the book is heavy because it contains all the stories of love that happened before, and because it takes a lifetime to read it and tell it.

But whatever you do, read it
...and tell it.