The first duty of love - is to listen.
-- Paul Tillich
I wonder if the listening required is a listening to life and to those in it, as if to live with the desire to have an understanding of it…not unlike listening to a person, not unlike loving a person.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
What's Missing & What's Present
As much as there is in the 1 Cor 13 passage on love (see below), I'm struck by is 'not' there...and what is not there seems to lead to a different orientation to the things that are there.
So, what isn't there? One thing, on the order of our common cultural diet, seems to not be related to what we should do...to love. We often look at something like this and only have enough interest to pursue what the 'actions' are...to determine whether or not those appear worth doing. When I consider the pieces of this passage and the tenor of them combined, I am struck by...what love isn't, what it doesn't do. The actions implied seem to be un-named and likely to flow out of out of something else. We want a list, which it looks like it is, but even more, we want a list of things we can do...in an effort, I'm afraid, to force an outcome we imagine. This description of love seems to avoid offering this to us.
What is there? I'm also struck by loves disposition, what it seems to have to believe. Like 'what isn't there', this description's 'To Do' items are equally non-specific in terms of specific tasks and tend to reference things that defy specific time-frames. It feels like love described here is something that results from something believed in, something dependent on a long-term view, something that is not abated by short-term circumstances. Love here seems to come from...understanding, not from feedback, not from results.
While we want something to do, love wants us to know something, to believe in something, to pursue something...all the way to the end. The kind of thing that perseverance needs...to continue despite reasons not to, despite the ease of typical responses to life and the hard things in it...love compels us to.
Perhaps the standard that is often set by this passage is not so much the perfection of accomplishing such things as it is in the believing what it takes...to stick to something (someone?), through think and thin, because it knows where it is headed. Love never gives up...is both the introduction and conclusion.
So, what isn't there? One thing, on the order of our common cultural diet, seems to not be related to what we should do...to love. We often look at something like this and only have enough interest to pursue what the 'actions' are...to determine whether or not those appear worth doing. When I consider the pieces of this passage and the tenor of them combined, I am struck by...what love isn't, what it doesn't do. The actions implied seem to be un-named and likely to flow out of out of something else. We want a list, which it looks like it is, but even more, we want a list of things we can do...in an effort, I'm afraid, to force an outcome we imagine. This description of love seems to avoid offering this to us.
What is there? I'm also struck by loves disposition, what it seems to have to believe. Like 'what isn't there', this description's 'To Do' items are equally non-specific in terms of specific tasks and tend to reference things that defy specific time-frames. It feels like love described here is something that results from something believed in, something dependent on a long-term view, something that is not abated by short-term circumstances. Love here seems to come from...understanding, not from feedback, not from results.
While we want something to do, love wants us to know something, to believe in something, to pursue something...all the way to the end. The kind of thing that perseverance needs...to continue despite reasons not to, despite the ease of typical responses to life and the hard things in it...love compels us to.
Perhaps the standard that is often set by this passage is not so much the perfection of accomplishing such things as it is in the believing what it takes...to stick to something (someone?), through think and thin, because it knows where it is headed. Love never gives up...is both the introduction and conclusion.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Love is...Patient
I’m in a hurry a lot. I find myself often thinking that I could get more done IF it didn’t take me so long to get from A to B. So I tend to run from place to place, to work, from work. This morning I was running back from my workout feeling some time pressure to get home faster, in order to make breakfast on time for the kids. I’d gotten up a bit later than usual, worked out faster than normal and was now trying to get home more quickly…thinking if I ran a little faster, I could be home more quickly…wishing I could ‘transport’ myself, so that it would be faster. I then realized I couldn’t run that much faster anyway and, afterall, it would only save me a minute or two. Besides what would be lost in a minute or two? Perhaps there is a reason why I have to put up with time…the time it takes to do things, to get places. What is behind my impatience with time anyway?
It dawns on me that there is an assumption I am making about what all I need to get done…and that there might be far less that needs to get done than I tend to think. My mind, with the benefit of my running time, wanders to my recent contemplations on love and I notice something familiar about this situation and how I tend to view love. For example, I often think that love is something that I need to do better and learn faster. Why is that? Would love even conform to such a thing…as compression? There is, afterall, something elusive about love…as if it is not to be fully captured…especially not by hurrying to it, hurrying through it.
It strikes me that one of the pre-dominant challenges of love is that it is something that you have to wait for, wait in. And then, my mind pops, “Love is patient.” What does it take to be patient? Experience mostly; whatever it takes, it seems to take a while. Why experience? Because experience gives us understanding. It teaches us to be willing to be patient, to wait, because it knows something important happens in the process of waiting. I suspect we have to experience the limitations of hurry and the benefits of the lessons time teaches us. And as we learn, we are willing to wait because we know it is better to do so…to trust in something happening that you can’t see in any given moment. Love is patient.
And, I am thankful, even if prematurely, for the limitations of hurrying…that time has much to teach us, that minutes don’t matter as much as we think, that an inconveniently longer than desired run can give me the many gifts of thought, and wonderings, and waitings on God for His timing in things.
It dawns on me that there is an assumption I am making about what all I need to get done…and that there might be far less that needs to get done than I tend to think. My mind, with the benefit of my running time, wanders to my recent contemplations on love and I notice something familiar about this situation and how I tend to view love. For example, I often think that love is something that I need to do better and learn faster. Why is that? Would love even conform to such a thing…as compression? There is, afterall, something elusive about love…as if it is not to be fully captured…especially not by hurrying to it, hurrying through it.
It strikes me that one of the pre-dominant challenges of love is that it is something that you have to wait for, wait in. And then, my mind pops, “Love is patient.” What does it take to be patient? Experience mostly; whatever it takes, it seems to take a while. Why experience? Because experience gives us understanding. It teaches us to be willing to be patient, to wait, because it knows something important happens in the process of waiting. I suspect we have to experience the limitations of hurry and the benefits of the lessons time teaches us. And as we learn, we are willing to wait because we know it is better to do so…to trust in something happening that you can’t see in any given moment. Love is patient.
And, I am thankful, even if prematurely, for the limitations of hurrying…that time has much to teach us, that minutes don’t matter as much as we think, that an inconveniently longer than desired run can give me the many gifts of thought, and wonderings, and waitings on God for His timing in things.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Love loves when...
Love loves when it is not loved back.
How can it do this? …because it knows it is loved by another who loves when He is not loved back.
How can it do this? …because it knows it is loved by another who loves when He is not loved back.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Love always trusts...
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Is trust the root of protects, hopes, perseveres? In other words, can I protect something that I don't trust? Can I hope or offer hope in something I don't trust? Can I really persevere without trust?
What does love trust in? In the likelihood of something turning out the way I want it to? In the innate goodness of another person? In my own ability to hold on to it? ...I'm guessing that in order to do all of these things (or any of them), I have to ultimately trust in something else...something other than these things.
Is trust the root of protects, hopes, perseveres? In other words, can I protect something that I don't trust? Can I hope or offer hope in something I don't trust? Can I really persevere without trust?
What does love trust in? In the likelihood of something turning out the way I want it to? In the innate goodness of another person? In my own ability to hold on to it? ...I'm guessing that in order to do all of these things (or any of them), I have to ultimately trust in something else...something other than these things.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Love never fails...
Love never fails – 1 Corinthians 13:8. I feel a bit snagged by the absolute nature of this statement, but suspect that it is meant to be encouraging, at the very least not defeating. What is the import of this truth about love, for me today?
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
New Old Law
We reach for a new law, often through the muck of an ever-present old one. And, as we do, we discover that the ‘new law’ is really the oldest one – the law of love, as so eloquently put in the now annually fading echo of the Christmas song, “Oh Holy Night”. The middle-law, the one we feel entrenched in now, is the law of independence. Its requirement is to ‘Be Independent’…do not put yourself at the risk of dependence on something else, much less others. The odd thing, and one that seems to take a while for us to detect, is that it comes guised in false wrapping – for by being ‘independent’, it instructs that we will have something we want, namely freedom. And in so doing, it attempts to subtly distort the freedom to ‘love’.
But, as we all come to know, this is not the way. Our dependence on God is what leads us to the older and more true law. The scent of ‘Be Independent’ is everywhere now, without and within. Help me learn to detect the real flavor of the ‘Be Dependent’, rather the false aroma of ‘Be Independent’, to know what real love is…through the freedom to do it.
But, as we all come to know, this is not the way. Our dependence on God is what leads us to the older and more true law. The scent of ‘Be Independent’ is everywhere now, without and within. Help me learn to detect the real flavor of the ‘Be Dependent’, rather the false aroma of ‘Be Independent’, to know what real love is…through the freedom to do it.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Being Human and Loving
I am both surprised and disappointed at the regularity and rate of change within myself. Why would I even be surprised or disappointed by such things? Largely, I’m guessing, it is because so often I feel so out of control of what is happening…and my ability to understand it seems so limited. Further, I’m guessing I’m only now embracing some things that it means to be human, by acknowledging more ways that I am human…and limited in my ability to control much of life, much less myself.
What brought this to light recently is my awareness of how selfish I am, how much love can escape me when I don’t feel loved. How much I am unable to steel myself in ‘love’ against the failures of my own ability to love well. Of course, it is possible that I don’t really understand much about love at all. And so, my mind recalls some of the summarized descriptors of love in I Corinthians 13. Because of some of the old ways and some of the new ways I have become aware (again) of my failures to love, I’ve decided to try to read and contemplate this passage again each day for 39 days. Why 39? Because it is one less than 40 days…and 40 days seems to be a popular euphemism for making something successful. While I probably do more than I think, I really don’t want to be successful at love…as much as I want to love better, in part by understanding it differently than the regular diet of love definition I absorb from the world.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
What brought this to light recently is my awareness of how selfish I am, how much love can escape me when I don’t feel loved. How much I am unable to steel myself in ‘love’ against the failures of my own ability to love well. Of course, it is possible that I don’t really understand much about love at all. And so, my mind recalls some of the summarized descriptors of love in I Corinthians 13. Because of some of the old ways and some of the new ways I have become aware (again) of my failures to love, I’ve decided to try to read and contemplate this passage again each day for 39 days. Why 39? Because it is one less than 40 days…and 40 days seems to be a popular euphemism for making something successful. While I probably do more than I think, I really don’t want to be successful at love…as much as I want to love better, in part by understanding it differently than the regular diet of love definition I absorb from the world.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Friday, January 01, 2010
New Year
What will a new year bring? Unanticipated suffering or surprising ease. Health or physical descent. Or, rather than either extreme, will it bring something in between. And, with any of these paths, will the thing we don't expect accompany it? I hope for a deeper trust -- in God, in others, in myself. I know the probable path that hope will lead me and the thought of it makes me shrink back a bit into something more familiar...even as I don't want as much of what is familiar as I do of what isn't. Such odd juxtapositions within me...enough to make me feel strange at times, at others enough to make me feel like the living I'm doing is just beginning.
I don't want pain and I don't want to cause it, but both will happen. Can I believe that the joys that often accompany such things will outlast what will turn out more to be inconveniences than anything else? I hope I have faith enough to find out. Even as I hope, I know that I am being given it...despite the evidence that can worthily damn me. For that truth, for that good, for surpassing greatness I step forward...into a new year.
I don't want pain and I don't want to cause it, but both will happen. Can I believe that the joys that often accompany such things will outlast what will turn out more to be inconveniences than anything else? I hope I have faith enough to find out. Even as I hope, I know that I am being given it...despite the evidence that can worthily damn me. For that truth, for that good, for surpassing greatness I step forward...into a new year.
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