A father decides he wants to retire from being king. He plans to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and live with his youngest daughter, who is likely to very shortly marry a foreign king. Do you see any problems here? An ex-king living with a frienemy king, leaving behind a divided kingdom? Or maybe this plan is the father's way to stop his daughter's marriage. Either way - he's not thinking or acting correctly.
It gets worse.
He decides the best way to divide the kingdom would be to ask his daughters to say in public how much they love him. Whoever gives the best speech will get the best part of the kingdom. His exact question is "which of you shall we say doth love us most?" Do you see any problems with these ideas?
It gets worse.
After his first daughter's speech, he immediately gives her one third of the kingdom. He's not even following the rules of his own twisted game. As you can tell, he's not much of a father or king. His second daughter says her speech. His youngest daughter refuses to play the game and as best she can tries to stop the train wreck her father started. What does she get for honesty? Her father banishes her and attempts outright to stop her marriage. But the foreign king sees her good sense, honesty and ability to love and marries her anyway.
It gets worse.
The father still attempts to retire from being king. Trouble is he wants to give up the responsibility but not the perks. He tries living with his other daughters, neither of whom wants to pay for his lavish lifestyle or have a former king hanging around gumming up their plans for ruling a divided kingdom. And these are ambitious women. One of them is going to "get rid" of the other, some how. I don't need to go into all of the gory details. And they are gory. This is one messed up family.
Eventually, the father ends up homeless and ill, wandering in the wild in the middle of a storm. His youngest daughter searches for him, finds him and keeps him safe. Which of his daughters loves him?
It gets better.
As he is waking up and coming to himself, he can hardly believe he is seeing the daughter he banished, the daughter he treated so poorly - to put it mildly. "I think this lady to be my child Cordelia." She responds simply, "I am. I am." Words that echo our Savior's words declaring his divinity in the Garden of Gethsemane during his betrayal. Lear, her father, says to her, in true humility, for he truly is coming to himself and fumbling to repent his wrongs, "If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you don't love me, for your sisters have (as I do remember) done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not."
He cannot comprehend that anyone could love him with all the bad he did. He did not understand Cordelia's love at the beginning and he does not believe it possible now.
Cordelia's response is the most divine moment of the story - full of the Atonement of Christ. It is the answer we all hope to hear when we beg forgiveness. Lear says the truth when he says Cordelia has a cause against him. Her response, "No cause. No cause."
Her love for her father is of the kind that she chooses not to strengthen his weaknesses by paying attention to them, but rather to always acknowledge his fatherhood and kingship - even as their parent/child, king/subject roles are reversed. She forgives so totally and completely and immediately that for her it's as if the sin never happened.
This infinite forgiveness is a divine quality. I doubt any of us are currently able to do this. It is a terrifying ideal to strive for, to be like Cordelia.
But we can all be like Lear - in a place of vulnerability and humility, knowing we are at the mercy of God. And we can accept forgiveness.
This is Love. Or at least some parts of it.
