Description
The following narrative, the second of two parts in the series “The Song of the Dove,” traces the stories of persons whose lives are deeply bound together by love, a love that is born, not merely between human hearts, but from the very Heart of God himself, who desires human communion to reflect his own divine intimacy as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Two of these persons, Adam and Natalya, are the central characters of the first novel, Unspeakable Beauty, and this second novel accompanies them into the full flowering of the home for which their hearts have yearned, unto the mysterious and unexpected gift of total surrender in the love that is stronger than death. Many other persons from the first novel are present as well, and their stories continue here and find a deeper and wider unfolding. But there are a few new persons to appear as well, with their own incomparable stories caught up into this tapestry of love: such as Schlomo, a young Jewish boy whose life is rent by the horrors of the Holocaust, and Agnieszka, a Polish woman who encounters him many years later, as well as Simon, a young American man of the early twenty-first century, filled with longing for something more, and a simple and radiant girl, Eithne, who enters his life.
These characters are not mere allegories or symbols, and are not to be taken as such; but through accompanying them in this way, it is hoped that our contemplating hearts may see and feel the closeness of the great mystery in which they are wrapped, and thus may find light cast upon our own path within this world as well. For this mystery, which touches each of their lives uniquely and powerfully, and which, in the singular story of their life and in the irreplaceable contours of their heart, becomes incarnate, is also the same mystery that enfolds us and seeks to become incarnate in our lives and relationships.
So in fact it could be said that this novel is about this mystery—about a God who is Love—just as much as it is about the characters whom you will soon get to know. In fact, it is more about him; for he is the Living One, who speaks in the fabric of every day of our lives, and who can come also through the passionately written (if profoundly inadequate) words of this book. It is my hope that by seeing glimpses of such a God in this story—by hearing the whisper of his tender breath or even his arms outstretched in loving embrace—you will come to understand your own true identity more deeply, and come also to love each of your brothers and sisters more deeply in the same sacred space. For here, before God, we are all simply beloved, uniquely and incomparably desired, chosen, and destined for everlasting intimacy with him, and, in him, with one another.
