Inland from the town of Morondava in Madagascar lies the famous "Avenue of the Baobabs". A little further on stand some very particular baobabs - "les Baobabs amoureux" (the baobabs in love) - which seem to grow from a single root. In fact, it is one baobab tree with two trunks wound spirally around each other in an endless embrace.

The trunk of the baobab is soft, and it takes many years for the tree to grow. The trees can reach up to 25 metres in height and live for thousands of years. Only after 20 years does the tree flower and bear fruit for the first time. Because of its slow growth and softness, it is compared to Malagasy women. In the southern part of Madagascar, tamarind trees are often deliberately planted beside baobabs to form a pair, since tamarind trees, with their fast growth and hard bark, represent manliness, speed and efficiency. Even today, rituals are held on the western coast of Madagascar in which newly married women stand before a baobab to pray for fertility and a successful marriage - a marriage which, like the growth of the baobab, which when fully grown conceals within it fruits of many kinds, requires patience, perseverance and gentleness.

We bring you a text by Fr Šimun Doljanin on the harm that haste does to the growth of love, together with two stories about the baobab that confirm this.

Love has a million enemies. One of the strongest is haste. When two people meet and fall in love, everything drives them to unite fully, and quickly. And if that happens, everything then drives them to begin living together under one roof very soon. Before long they begin making joint plans and buying things together. All of this looks logical and good. It all happens fast, and it seems to them a powerful expression of love. Because, supposedly, love cannot wait.

The enemy of unity is hasty union. Many things have not yet fallen properly into place, and union already takes place, and within it there are countless short circuits. And we know what short circuits do to electricity. It is similar with love. After all, this is about two persons. Between persons everything moves slowly. Gradually. The person is a great mystery! Elusive. Shy. Hidden. We know that our word "person" comes from the Greek original (for it was coined there): prosopon. That means a mask. A role. It conceals far more than it reveals. And it is always something other than what it presents. Unmasking is a precise business. In haste, a great deal can go wrong, and people can wound one another, one thing after another.

Love cannot bear haste. It grows in the night. In silence. It advances slowly. In itself it is the accelerator, the fire, the engine, and reason is its brake. Its steering wheel is grace from above. Its GPS is teachability. Braking does it a great service. Slowing down allows it to dock more deeply (as when spacecraft dock with one another). A deeper union. A lifelong union. Until death. The great majority of separations and tragic relationships are the fruit of haste.

What our old, good mother the Church says - that before the wedding one is to live in a chaste engagement (holding hands and refraining from the use of other limbs!) - comes from the very nature of love. That is what love is like. It needs time. Purity. Conversation. The pouring out of souls before the pouring out of bodies. The gentle removing of masks. The careful healing of old wounds. The attentive touching of new wounds. Letting a rhythm unfold that respects the other person.

When some people hear that engaging in sexual relations before marriage (and outside marriage) is a sin, their hair stands on end. What kind of sin is that? This is love. An expression of love. We love each other and give ourselves to one another. We will love each other until death. We enjoy one another. What sin could that be?

The sin of haste! Of hurry! Of carelessness! Of failing to respect the depth of the other person! The sin of deceiving oneself and deceiving the other! The sin of concealing what is essential and lasting! The sin of forgetting the true law of engagement. The sin of failing to distinguish the status of engagement from the status of marriage! There are countless sins here. Mistakes. Abuses. Distortions. And what of the deliberate interruption of the marital act? What of contraception? What of playing games with coercion should conception occur? What of psychological immaturity? What of promiscuity? The rapid changing of partners!

Love is like a snail! Like a baobab!

(A man currently engaged to be married read the above and confirmed it. His name is Ivan, and his fiancée's name is Maja!)

From The Little Prince

In The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's narrator explains to the little prince that baobabs are not shrubs at all, but trees as huge as a cathedral, and that even a whole herd of elephants could make no impression on a single one of them. The little prince points out that baobabs, too, are small before they grow large. True enough, the narrator admits - but then why would he want his sheep to eat the small baobabs?

On the little prince's own planet, as on every planet, there grew both good plants and bad ones: good seed alongside weeds. Seeds themselves cannot be seen; they lie hidden in the soil until, for reasons of their own, they decide to wake. Then a small, harmless-looking shoot pushes shyly up towards the sun. If it turns out to be a rose or a radish, it can safely be left to grow. But a weed must be pulled up the moment it is recognised for what it is. On the little prince's planet there happened to be a particularly dangerous kind of seed - the baobab - and the soil there was full of it. Left too long, a baobab can never be got rid of again: it overruns the whole planet and splits it apart with its roots, and if the planet is a small one, it may even be torn to pieces. As the little prince later explained, this is simply a matter of discipline: once you have finished tidying yourself in the morning, you must also carefully tidy your planet, forcing yourself to pull up the baobab shoots regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the rose bushes they resemble so closely while still young. It is a tedious task, he said, but a very easy one.

The Story of the Hare, the Hyena and the Baobab

One day, a hare went out into the savannah and stretched out in the shade of a great baobab tree. "The shade of this tree is wonderful," said the hare, "but who knows whether its fruit is any good?" At this the baobab let a fruit fall to the ground; the hare picked it up, ate it, and said: "The fruit really is good, but will the inside of the trunk be just as good?" The baobab opened a crack in its trunk, the hare went inside, and there he saw wonderful necklaces, magnificent jewels and beautiful gowns. The hare wasted no time - he took some of the precious things and brought his prize back to his mate, who adorned herself with the treasure he had brought.

The hyena's mate, who was a friend of the hare's mate, went to visit her, and when she saw her so beautifully dressed and adorned with jewels, she immediately wanted the same kind of treasure for herself. As soon as she got home she said to her partner: "The hare's mate has extraordinary jewels and  a beautiful gown, while I have the shabbiest dress and a worthless trinket." The hyena went off to find the hare and asked him where he had found all that treasure. The hare showed the hyena the baobab and told him how he had come by all that treasure, so the hyena tried the same thing. However, once he had gone into the belly of the baobab, unlike the hare, the hyena  shouted out loudly: "Dear baobab, I'm going to carry all this treasure straight home with me!" At these words the baobab took fright and closed up the opening in its trunk through which the hyena had entered. The hyena could no longer get out, and remained trapped forever inside the baobab. The hyena, who had wanted everything for himself all at once,  could no longer enjoy the treasure he had found. The baobab denied him food as well, and the hyena  died.