Hooks and Magnets
There's a relational metaphor I love to use as I'm explaining Devotional Love.
Relationships stay together through hooks or magnets.
Hooks are obligations, loyalty, covenants, promises, shared responsibility, etc.
Magnets are an attractive force that simply IS.
Devotional love is magnet love. It's the love of two people who decide to do only exactly what they want, and find that being with each other is a major reoccurring desire. They're together because being together feels better than not being together.
Magnet love is the love we all want, but tragically we often use hooks to get it. To get it in the sense of receiving it, but also in the sense of believing it.
It's tragic because the presence of hooks renders the magnet inert and undetectable.
Yet, hooks make a lot more sense. If you knew you absolutely needed two things to stay together, would you pick two things you could physically secure, or two things that have smooth flat outsides?
And yet, if you hooked the things together, they wouldn't be as secure as the magnets.
The hooks need to be lined up and joined.
The magnets can't help themselves, all that's required is proximity, and they snap together.
But the magnets don't offer that *sense* of security, from afar, that physically seeing hooks provides. Because they don't look like anything is happening. Magnetism is invisible, and that leads us to think it might be unreliable or nonexistent. But we can feel it. It's palpable, both between chunks of metal and between human beings who simply cannot get enough of one another.
The real kicker, though, is that the sense of security has to go first. A leap of faith is required. If I choose to devote to magnet love, I need to remove my hook. And I can't approach anyone else who is still using hooks, or I won't be able to experience the magnetism, even if it exists.
I'm looking for smooth surfaces, then tuning into the feelings.
It's not subtle.
We snap together.