Love, Wisdom, and Joy

[sdi]

And they asked the angel, “What then is heavenly joy?”

To which the angel replied in these few words: “It is the delight of doing something that is useful to ourselves and to others; and the delight of use derives its essence from love and its existence from wisdom. The delight of use springing from love by wisdom is the life and soul of all heavenly joys.

(Emanuel Swedenborg, The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugal Love, as translated by William Ross Woofenden)

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People who report having near-death experiences always say that life has two purposes: to learn and to love. I've wondered why it always two and only those two, and not one thing or many things. Swedenborg's angels have a ready answer: love is the source of life, wisdom is the means of life, and together these culminate in making oneself useful, which is joy.

This perhaps makes sense of what people mean when they say that "God is love;" in that sense, they are saying that God is the source, which is true (if tautological).