A 7 year old, the Universe and Love

My 7 year old son was quiet the other day, so I knew a question was forming that would be a doozy. I wasn’t disappointed.

 
Son: Mom, if everything has a beginning, middle and end, how can the Universe go without end? This question has really been bothering me for a long time, it really worries me. No one answers it for me.
 
Mom: Well, everything does have a beginning, middle and end at least in the way the brain is able to understand. There is a much larger Force around us, some people call it God, or Universe, or Love, and this Force is so large, there is no way that our small brains can possibly figure it out. It can feel uncomfortable at times when we do try to figure it out, and there is tendency with some people to make sense of it by attaching stories to the Force. But really, it is just this. We can’t possibly know, because this Force is a governing force that we come from, it does not come from us. And it works through us. Does that makes sense?
 
Son: (Sigh.)Yes it makes sense that it is so large my brain can’t understand anything so big. But…what does love have to do with it? I don’t need to understand that.
 
Indeed. What does love have to do with this? Someone ran up to our car so our conversation was interrupted, but while alone after drop him off at school, I thought more about the question. I was reminded of the quote by the poet Rumi:
 
“Our task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
 
Son: Mom, I love you.
 
Mom: And I love you.
 
Son: I love you and Daddy and my friends most of all. Then I love my toys. I still don’t understand the universe.
 
Mom: That’s because the universe is like love. You feel it in your heart. We try to make sense of things with our heads through science and learning things at school. But really the most important things are what you feel in your heart and living from that place of what makes your heart feel good.
 
Son: (putting my hand in mine and singing a song he made up) If you don’t have love, you have nothing, all you need is love. if you don’t have love, you have nothing, all you need is love.
 
We sang this all the way home.