I am and I love

“I am and I love” expresses the spiritual creature’s momentary capacity for active love on earth. In the meditation on hell, that capacity is not merely a feeling but a priceless gift and the reason earthly life is given; to reject it is to turn existence toward the suffering of being unable to love.

The Phrase and Its Context

The words appear in a reflection on the nature of hell. The speaker considers a spiritual creature that existed beyond earthly time and space and was granted, upon coming to earth, the power to say, “I am and I love.” The paired clauses join existence to love: being is presented not as a self-sufficient fact but as a capacity realized in relation to others.

A Brief Gift of Active Love

The reflection describes this power as an earthly opportunity given only once. The creature receives a single moment of active, uplifting love, and earthly life—with its times and seasons—is given for that purpose. The phrase therefore points to a possibility that must be enacted within finite life, rather than an assurance that love will arise automatically or remain available without choice.

Rejection and the Meaning of Hell

The meditation turns on the creature’s refusal of the gift: it prizes the gift neither rightly nor lovingly, but scorns it. Against conventional images of hell as a place or external punishment, the speaker defines it as the suffering of being unable to love. The phrase marks the lost alternative: existence can be joined to active love, but rejecting that possibility makes the creature’s own incapacity its torment.