Love and permanence

Katie van Schaijik | Nov 4, 2010

In May, Jules and I had a chance to visit Italy and walk the Cinque Terre—a beautiful, rugged pathway connecting five coastal villages in the north.

We started at a part of it called the Via dell Amore—the Way of Love. And here and there along that way of love, we came upon collections of locks, like this one.

And this one:

Some were rusted with age, some brand new. At first we were bewildered. But then we understood. Countless lovers had walked that way and left a lock as a sign of the permanence of their love for one another.

I found it a touching, simple and beautiful expression of a deep and universal truth. Love longs for eternity. Nothing else satisfies.

I wish the world understood it better. Marriage—the covenanted, indissoluble union of a man and a woman, professed before God and the world—is the only possible earthly realization of an essential aspiration of love.