Where does love come from and what happens to that love after death?

I have always found answers to major questions via science.

Questions like what forces make mountains, what made us like we are, how do the sun and stars make heat and light, how do clouds form, why are plants green and the sky blue.

The answers provided by science often are eloquent and profound — sometimes they are beautiful. But one of my major questions remains unanswered — where does love come from and what happens to it after death?

Throughout my life I have sought answers to this question in the sacred books of religion. The answers found there are partial, often beautiful and profound yet they are balanced in the same books by stories of death, wars, fear and hatred.

The question as to where love comes from arose again after the death of my little friend.

One day I found him outside the window unconscious on the ground. He had flown into the glass thinking it led into the house with clear air. He wasn’t dead so I gathered him up and put him into a box with a little bed and water and food. It took many days, but he eventually recovered.

I came to love the little creature and I saw he loved me. He ate out of my hand and let me rub his feathery head.

One day I put him on the grass so he could walk around. As I walked away I saw and heard a flash of feathers. In an instant my little friend was carried away in the talons of a hawk.

For a time I felt hatred for the hawk for taking my little friend away so violently. But soon I remembered that the hawk was simply acting out of a primal hunting instinct built into him by nature.

The question reared its head again.

Where did the love between me and the little bird come from and what happened to the love after he was killed? I do not know and perhaps never will.

He is part of the hawk now and flying higher than he ever could before. Knowing this makes me happy — a small compensation for the loss. Perhaps our small modicum of love simply folded into the numinous fabric that permeates everything in nature.

I am reminded that the love of God is everywhere.

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither. do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Matthew 6:26

Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Matthew 10:29