Miracle of Love

This is a tough one. I've been trying to figure out what Gira is trying to say in this song for quite a while, but have never come to any conclusions. I have a few ideas as to the meanings of certain parts.

Building on many of the existential themes of the album, here I think Gira is expressing a certain anger towards God. Songs titles such as "Why Are We Alive?" point to obvious questions and a search for meaning in his life.

"How can they hold what they can never perceive?" seems to reference the idea of God as the source of love, and as love itself. I can't tell which way to interpret this... one way would be to see it from an ironic standpoint. Gira seems to despise the idea that love can exist here on Earth. If humans can never see God, or never know (You Know Nothing), how could they possibly hold it for one another... how could they (they being the theoretical relationship couple that exists in the first part of the song) know it's love? A second interpretation could be that, because of the lines that follow it, he's asking almost a question to which he follows with an answer. How could they know love? Well look around, the undeniable existence of "one second in your memory," "one heartbeat in your body," "white light on a black sky" are all pretty miraculous, which could be seen as the ultimate form of love given by God. However, he follows with the line "One lonely moment in your arms is the miracle of love," where his use of 'the' instead of 'a' might indicate that no, these aren't miracles, they aren't expressions of love, life is only loneliness and suffering. "One second denied is a miracle of love," again points to irony. It is the other half of the coin to the previous line "One second in your presence is a miracle of love." Seemingly contradictory, I think Gira seems to be asking how being in the presence of God could be a miracle of love, yet being on Earth, away from the presence of God, could also be (what many proclaim) as a miracle of love, how life, so full of suffering, could ever be an expression of God to his children.

"God said to no one to do what he did," I have always felt means the creation of life... having a child.

That's about all I have. Feel free to add input.

Seems like an ironic song about how love isn't very lovely. "The young man is weakness in a lover's disguise" a guy who wants sex and not love. "The woman is strong in her warm bed of lies" a woman who wants control and not love. "How will they hold what they can never perceive" it seems impossible that such greedy people would ever produce a love that survives. "And how do they love what they fail to deceive" the girl and guy see through eachothers lies and disguises. "One second in your memory is a miracle of lies" people devote so much thought and time to thinking about people who hurt them with lies and deception. "One heartbeat in your body is a miracle of love" it's a miracle that anyone stays alive when love is this dark. "One lonely moment in your arms is the miracle of love" people's selfish intents converging at a point of a physical intamacy is as close to love as anyone's ever gonna get.

Seems like the word love is defined less as a pure and fantastical feeling that makes the world a happy place, and more of a curtain that we use to throw over a very painful, carnal, and emotionally taxing experience that we were all born from and all go through.

Sad song that isn't entirely untrue, but it's all about perspective day by day.

[Edit: gramar]