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invasion
-my generation's "Red Hot Chili Peppers."
love is an invasive thing, instantly displacing loneliness with passion, disdain with gentleness, apathy with joy. religion tries to own love, believing somehow it is more rightfully religious turf than other people's. the thing is, religion is one of the three tabernacles they wanted to build at the transfiguration. religion is the attempt to hold onto love in spite of your fear. more accurately, it is the attempt to grasp love because of your fear - your fear that love can be lost. and that is the evidence that love is not yet understood. how can you lose love when love found you?
when the clouds open at the end of the storm, that is not the invention of the sun. (i LOVE that my brain just said that to me! HA!) the sun has been there waiting patiently to be seen. great music isn't "written." have you watched someone write music? they take a note. then they try notes after it until they discover the one that sounds closest to the emotion in their heart. then they see what note sounds best after the first two. see? discovery. great music and sublime love are discovered. at my family's 4th of July celebration, i got into a conversation with my cousin's child. he knows a lot of words but is too young to pronounce them correctly. it is cute as all get-out. he was churning his legs like a dog while playing in the pool. a floatation vest was holding him up, but he was telling me how he learned to swim THAT DAY! HA! i hooked into his age in my brain and talked with him for half an hour and laughed til i coughed and had a blast. the rest of the day i was "that man." he LOVED "that man." "that man" was SO cool! ... kids. ::sigh::
suppose i call you and suggest we meet for a beer (or coffee, if beer is a no-no). as we sit and talk, i tell you that a mutual friend is dying. this guy has had a run of luck like he broke a mirror WHILE walking under a ladder while a black cat walked in front of him. i don't want to send him into eternity with all this ugliness being what is on his mind and heart. so i am asking everybody to visit with him for fifteen minutes or half an hour. maybe remind him of some better times, you know? you say sure. who am i talking about? and i tell you it is your one-time best friend. he fell in love with and married your sister and then they had an ugly divorce. you haven't talked since. you gave me your word you would go. what do you do?
first you get ugly mad with me. i tricked you. but then it gets to the issue. with impending death on the line, does your resentment still seem like the best option? okay. ridiculous premise. it was for illustration purposes. in reality, smaller versions of this choice happen every day around us. do you want your child's last image before sleep to be anger? sleep cements ideas, so you are creating the child you will later live with. it cements feelings at all ages. Grandma and Grandpa held hands falling asleep every night and woke up in love every morning (for me that is a much stronger example of reaping what you sow than any sin/hell sermon).
"let not the sun go down on your wrath." it isn't that they might die without hearing you say you are sorry. it is that they may have to live with the wounds your words have caused. overrule those wounds. apologize sincerely one time (unless you have strayed in your commitment. that will literally take years of apologies sometimes.), and immediately reach out in love. become vulnerable. don't even let calluses have a chance to perch and grow. talk. don't pout. don't retaliate. talk. it will get you back on the rails. love isn't having no rough patches. it is gently passing rough patches together because you are grown up enough to know you won't be mad forever. oh! you don't even have to talk about the problem. go to dinner and agree to talk about no problems. just talk.
people who operate from love operate from power, from strength, from compassion, from joy, from empathy. those things don't mix with anger. they overrule it. they keep your kids talking to you. they keep your marriage strong ... if you BOTH are doing it. and oddly enough, they keep the church strong and vibrant when we quit competing and just love. okay. end of sermon. keep your heart open.
Posted by AllThingsBuck on 2009-07-05 14:40:18 | Rating: | Views: 80
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