"We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community."
--Dorothy Day
I believe what makes so many religious people stumble over love, who actually sneer at the mention of love by someone like Ms. Day, is that it is actually a difficult daily journey. It is not often an easy, exciting adventure in which we feel like singing FEELINGS or KUMBAYA. Culture, religion, traditions, personal habits have a way of getting under the skin giving us what we think are understandable reasons for not "feeling the love".
ReplyDeleteBut accepting the task of love is the only choice we have if we wish to save our lives, our souls, even when it feels like an impossibility. We have no choice but to demand of ourselves to let our imperfection embrace imperfection, to turn away from a squeaky clean packaging of love. For me, Adrienne Rich, in her poem, STEPPING BACKWARD, sings it well:
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind
mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
So often we fail to see those statements in the story reminding of the universality of the good news message: From the Magnificant: "He has filled the hungry with good things; And sent away the rich empty-handed." And, "Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy, which shall BE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE."
ReplyDeleteAll you need is love...and a little help from your friends.~the beatles
ReplyDeleteyou better find somebody to love.~grace slick
if it wasn't for 70's folk rock & Jesus freeks I would never have found Jesus!