‘Love is enough,’ for the void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter those lips and those eyes of the loved and the lover (William Morris: ‘Love is Enough,’ A poetic Romance in the form of a Lyric Masque, 1873). For Morris, as for the Song of Songs, ‘love is enough’ because its music of spheres is the song of angels inspiring saints, revealing the world was created for love’s paradise to be unveiled. Though none can measure love or conceive how love stays falls, love blesses unloved lovers as well as the loved. Being the bane of fear, love is the ancient of days, renewing life that cannot die. Love’s wisdom knows why love cannot be sold, though it is obliviously bought and sold in the markets of power, forgetting why ‘love is enough’ to make all things new. ‘Love is enough’ for thrice holy mysteries to be God’s undiluted delight, long before creation bequeaths its various schools of love. Saints in God’s image wrestle with love for the throne and the crown, telling stories of paradise where love’s light is delight. Morris told tales of love’s wounding that sing of love’s glory, inspired by love’s music of spheres, chanting, ‘love is enough.’
‘Love is enough,’ sings Morris, for it pierces and burns, purifying hearts with light and glory’s unquenchable fire. ‘Love is enough’, unsought but unstifled, though cursed by the law and condemned to hell fire. Love’s wings raise the dead, restoring glory to God in the midst of life’s insufferable pain. ‘Love is enough’ to renew creation and heal the divisions that tear it apart. Holding wide open what death vainly excludes, the wisdom of love cuts through confusion so it cannot divide. Ineffably open to incisive wisdom, glory leaps over fear, beholding presence of light in oneness of glory. Glory loves wisdom, knowing ‘love is enough,’ opening wisdom to glory, curing distracted dismembering with the remembrance of God. For Morris, love always was ‘enough,’ from the very beginning, right through to the end, for, although wavering dithers, as if nothing is sure, love overcomes the wavering world. Why does fear distrust what overcomes fear? Because fear can only conserve fear if it stays safe from love’s fire.
‘Love is enough’ to come with us when the Kingdom comes, sowing seeds of blessing and of bliss. Love is balm to wounds of love when piercing hearts, answering suffering with long-suffering joy. Love is home, offering welcome to all, leading homeward the lost, whatever the cost. Love is always ‘enough’ to cure blind passion, healing every wound with generous compassion. Morris saw that prophecy of love inspired poetry of prayer, hallowing many tales and intricate designs. ‘Love is enough’ because love completes what falls away, the completeness of glory that time postpones. Morris and MacDonald inspired Tolkein and Lewis, inklings before inklings in an Oxford inn, demonstrating the generous scope of love’s embrace. ‘Love is enough,’ to prophesy completeness in wondrous ways that incompleteness loves. Wounds cry out as love leaps to save, always enough to embrace despair. Morris sings love’s ancient song of love, undoing wrongs, martyred for love with the slaughtered Lamb. Remembering ‘love is enough,’ restores wisdom with wonder, renewing prophecy and infusing prayer, transfusing fear with transfiguring love.