Tunnel of Love: A Meditation

My friends Holly and Sue run a small farm in Maine. When they first decided to begin breeding their pigs, it seemed like it would be easy. They had kept their healthy, full-grown boar and sow well separated until then, enclosed (wisely) by electric wire fencing in large roaming areas far away from one another at opposite ends of the property. On the appointed day they re-strung the fencing to create a passageway between the two pigs’ areas. The boar and the sow would eventually find one another, so we thought. Nature would take its course and we would soon have little piglets. Holly named the passageway between the boar and the sow’s living areas the “Tunnel of Love” and awai

ted the results.

There was an unforeseen problem. Pigs are very intelligent animals with good memories. Both pigs knew, by then, where the electric fence had always been around their areas. They had learned not to wander into the fencing, and vigilantly kept from doing so. Even though the fencing was no longer there at either entrance to the Tunnel of Love, both pigs refused to cross the line where the fencing had once been. And so began a long process of enticing the boar, little by little, to take steps into the entrance way of the Tunnel of Love. It took a lot of tasty food, strategically placed and carefully timed, to convince the boar to take the risk, to cross that invisible line, that barrier so deeply ingrained in his mind. Eventually the boar did venture into the passageway and beyond, and eventually the sow did give birth to a full litter of healthy piglets.

Love between human beings – deep love, enduring love, life-giving love – is obviously different from breeding pigs. It’s MORE: more complicated and messy, more layered and nuanced, more work and risk, more transformative, more powerful, more beautiful and indescribably amazing. But when it comes to taking steps on love’s path, towards deeper, fuller, more transformative love, towards more holy and life-giving love, that kind of love towards which God is always beckoning us … well, we are a lot like the pigs. We’re stuck. We have barriers and obstacles, both real and imagined, that stand in the way like electric fences. We have fear of getting hurt, fear of stepping beyond the boundaries of what feels safe, fear of leaving the familiar places where we have always lived and moved - but NOT experienced the fullness of our being. Even if the actual fences have been removed, fear is often enough to hold us entrapped and isolated.

God’s work in our lives is to get us to move on the path towards life-giving love, to take steps into the Tunnel of Love. The fences that threaten to hold us captive, alone and terrified, are removed and the way of Love is opened for us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But too often, like those pigs, we remain stuck in our deeply-ingrained patterns of self-centeredness and fear. God is always at work in our lives, though, to get us beyond our habitual enclosed dwellings and all the real and imagined obstacles to love, to move us to a new place and a new way of being. God longs for us, and makes it possible for us - stubborn, scared, stuck and clueless people – to walk on that pathway towards deeper, fuller loving relationship with God and one another.

The Rev. Amanda K. Gott

Grace & St. Peter's Episcopal Church

#meditation #love