Toni Morrison on God and Love

An excerpt from Toni Morrison’s Paradise, formatted as a poem for your reading pleasure. This passage challenges us to read and think with care: the idea here isn’t that we don’t “deserve” to be loved, but rather that love isn’t a matter of “deserving” or “not deserving.” Likewise, what we “earn” isn’t the right to be loved, but rather “the right to express it”; and what we “have to learn” is how to accept it. Morrison is a master of provocative, insightful language, so we are wise to read (as she puts it!) “God-carefully”…

Love is divine only and difficult always.
If you think it is easy you are a fool.
If you think it is natural you are blind.
It is a learned application
without reason or motive
except that it is God.
You do not deserve love
regardless of the suffering
you have endured.
You do not deserve love
because somebody did you wrong.
You do not deserve love
just because you want it.
You can only earn — by practice
and careful contemplations —
the right to express it
and you have to learn how to accept it.
Which is to say
you have to earn God.
You have to practice God.
You have to think God-carefully.
And if you are a good and diligent student
you may secure the right to show love.
Love is not a gift.
It is a diploma.

+ Toni Morrison