The self-forgetting kind

In his novel Castle Warlock, George MacDonald writes of the Church, "whose stars are the burning eyes of unutterable, self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless ministration of self-forgetting deeds." That phrase, "self-forgetting love," brought to mind a common saying in Christian circles, the notion of "dying to self" that married people in particular are admonished to do. We are called to lay down our lives, as it were, and put the lives of our spouses ahead of our own.

It's an admirable sentiment, one I've often thrown at other people and rebuked myself for failing to do. It strikes me that there's an important difference between "self-forgetting love" and "dying to self" that may help people who, like me, struggle with the latter. The difference, of course, is the elimination of self from the equation.

When I---selfish, self-absorbed man that I am---take on the task of "dying to self," I often do it like a self-celebrating martyr. In other words, I don't really die to self; instead I walk around with the proud notion that I am being a Saintly Husband (for a few fleeting moments), or the self-pitying sense that I am on the losing side of this transaction ("What has she done for me lately, while I'm engaging in all this selflessness???").

But to be dead to self is to, well, forget oneself. The dead aren't self-aware, after all. They don't lie about in their tombs, bemoaning how quickly they have been forgotten, or how no one lays flowers at their gravestones any more, or how their noble or tragic deaths are not being adequately celebrated.

Self-forgetting, then, seems to be an essential part of this necessary dying to self. I (without question, I) mustn't put my wants and grievances on a shelf, where I can survey them and think on how I'm not holding them at present. I must forget I had them.

The only way to do that is to forget me. And the only way to do that is to think on this person I have sworn (and failed, repeatedly) to love and cherish and protect from the world, or at least from the worst parts of me. Perhaps the only real love, in the end, is the self-forgetting kind.