Love and the Restraint of Power

The Christian mantra to "love your neighbor as yourself" is an interesting one.  In my opinion it is also completely and totally misunderstood and practiced less in church settings than anywhere I know.  That is because so much of church "politics" is power mongering, and the church is just a xerox copy of the world with pious-sounding accompaniment.  It is mongering with a mantra; crawling over people to stand big and tall on platitudes.

Love is not only about what one does; it may be about what one can do but does not do.  Working in the justice system, I have known this for a long time.  I finally found a Christian writing that recognizes the value of some things left undone:    

"While reactive victims are primarily known by their 'against' stances, proactive people do not demand rights, they live them.  Power is not something you demand or deserve, it is something you express.  The ultimate expression of power is love; it is the ability not to express power, but to restrain it.  Proactive people are able to 'love others as themselves.'"

From Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

Outrageous Love

Phillip Yancy, in his book by the same title, asks what's so amazing about grace and uses Jesus' parable of the prodigal son as an example. The son had shown great contempt for the father but eventually, and unexpectantly, came home. The son was full of remorse,but that is not the focus of the story; instead the parable focuses on the joy of the finder (the father, the bestower of grace). Yancy says:

".....the central focus of the story is the father's outrageous love: 'But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.' When the son tries to repent, the father interrupts his prepared speech in order to get the celebration under way.

A missionary in Lebanon once read this parable to a group of villagers who lived in a culture very similar to the one Jesus described and who had never heard the story. 'What do you notice?' he asked.

Two details of the story stood out to the villagers. First, by claiming his inheritance early, the son was saying to the father 'I wish you were dead!' The villagers could not imagine a patriarch taking such an insult or agreeing to the son's demand. Second, they noticed that the father ran to greet his long-lost son. In the Middle East, a man of stature walks with slow and stately dignity; never does he run. In Jesus' story the father runs, and Jesus' audience no doubt gasped at this detail."

I am interested in Yancy's term outrageous love. Is this grace? Have I found a definition that makes sense to me? I think so.

You don't see much outrageous love these days. It is not in the fabric of today's culture; it is viewed through squinted eyes as a horrible form of weakness. As an example, ex's are expected to hate each other, questioned when they do not and judged stupid or weak by "good Christian people" who do not witness the animosity they expect to see between sinners who hurt each other. Each is expected to play the blame game andgrasp and weld whatever power he or she has to collect a pound of flesh. While jabbering about grace, elbowing each other out of the way to gather the crumbs of love, we do not know outrageous love when we see it. It still makes us gasp.

Oddly Katharine Hepburn and Jesus might have seen love eye to eye. Hepburn's insight makes me wonder if love is love at all if it is not outrageous. She said:

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only what you are expecting to give - which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving." 

If, in fact, God has no hands but ours, are we not, as a result of the incarnation, the bearers of grace, one to another?  Going into Advent, I want to ponder how more than just amazing grace is.  I want to meditate upon its outrageousness and celebrate it wherever I am privileged to bear witness.  Why celebrate?  Because according to Yancy "Trace the roots of grace, or charis in Greek, and you will find a verb that means 'I rejoice, I am glad.'"

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Winking In the Midst of Melodrama

"Despite all of these inner fears of removing the mask, it should be clear that when someone loves your personality and merely accepts you for the roles you are playing - it is not the real 'You' who are receiving the benefit of this acceptance.  There is always the fear of failure and the tensions created due to not being yourself fully at all times.  Nevertheless, as hard as it may seem for some to believe, there does exist a love in which one can love 'You' directly.  That is, one can love 'You' regardless of how you look, what you say, or what you do.  When a person loves 'You,' they understand the meaninglessness of how you externally express yourself.  It becomes a standing game between you to watch your lower selves 'do their thing,' while a part of you remains detached, winking at one another in the midst of the worldly melodrama.  This is true acceptance.  With it comes the absolute sense of freedom in knowing that the relationship is an eternal one.  There is nothing that can come between you, because you know each other as you really are."~Michael A. Singer from Three Essays on Universal Law, The Laws of Karma, Will and Love

Mockingbirds

Kymulga Grist Mill near Childersburg, Alabama

A Southern classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is required reading in the South. Published in 1960, the story is a vision of the summer of 1936 when the Alabama author was ten years old. A brother and sister, Jem and Scout, along with their friend, Dill, run around a small town in overalls, playing the hardy imaginal games taught by freedom to roam in the heat of a Southern summer, learning the lessons of injustice and mercy. Southerners always seem to identify with one or other of the characters, and, like the characters in Gone with the Wind, they might as well be real people who live down the street since their actions and inactions are discussed accordingly.

When the children’s father tells them that it would be a sin to kill a mockingbird, a neighbor, Mrs. Maudie, explains why. A mockingbird is one who

“…don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.“

A mockingbird was revealed to the children in the form of a reclusive, downright odd neighbor, Boo Radley, the town spook, so to speak, with a tragic past, a man scorned and feared. Boo watched over the children without their knowing. Unable to relate to the children, he loved them nonetheless, and left them presents in the hollow of a tree. Treasures left by Boo included: two pieces of Wrigley's Double Mint Gum; two scrubbed and polished pennies; one ball of gray twine; two “almost perfect miniatures of two children” (Scout and Jem); one whole package of chewing gum; a tarnished spelling bee medal; and “a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.”

Ultimately Boo’s greatest gift was saving the lives of the children and bringing them home. Boo was, in the end a mockingbird, doing no harm, giving without expectation, singing his heart out in his own odd way.

Boo wasn’t such a strange man. I would imagine that many people make containers similar to tree hollows in which they give others their druthers.  Love is seldom melodramatically grand. Often its symbols are little, unpretentious, tentative, yet faithful. Gum, pennies, twine…that’s the stuff with which we sing out our apprehensive, worn out hearts.

Hovering Healing Wings

The meaning of love is lost in any relationshiop that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there.  The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God that hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. ~ A Course In Miracles

Not All Fish Drink Water

One universally held belief is that all people want to be loved.  Most would agree with the proposition.  But we would be wrong in making that claim.

Similarly, it is error to claim that all animals drink water because we do.  Fresh water fish do not.  They live in water and absorb it through their bodies, but they do not drink it.

While many people live in a state of love, the last thing they want is the true intimacy of emotional exposure that is born of trust and self knowledge.  They are "in love" as fish are "in water" without ever swallowing the element.

I think that popular culture encourages this type of immersion, seducing us into the shallow end.  Oh, but how painfully sweet the pleasure of plunging into the deep.