...............................Spirit of Love

Can you hear me as I whisper
from my heart without a sound?
Sense me gazing deep into your eyes
Though I am nowhere around?

Do we touch then as I trace the lines
Of your hands, neck, and face?
Do you feel me standing near you
'Though I'm in some distant place?

Like a ghost unseen I’m with you,
Hov’ring longingly nearby.
Yearning to materialize before you
But I cannot, tho' I try!

Still, I know the warmth of your flesh,
And I feel your gentle breath;
We are bound together always,
We are one in life or death.

This is that which poets write of
When they pen their sweetest lines;
When they write of love and beauty
Surely this is on their minds.

"Money Can't Buy Me Love..."

The Beatles sang:
"I'll give you all I got to give, if you say you love me too.
I may not have a lot to give, but what I got I'll give to you;
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love.

Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can't buy me love, no no no, no."


Poll after poll confirms the claim that people are more love hungry today than, perhaps, ever in the history of the world. Partly as a result of the rapid pace of life and the resulting loss of intimacy, partly as a consequence of the fluidity of contemporary populations with roots being torn up and transplanted, and partly as a result of a loss of our primal, human connection to life, earth, and community, the capacity to be love-aware has risen in direct proportion to the decline of its availability. We all long to be deeply loved, cherished by someone, the focus of another's heart.

False representations of something called "love" are on parade in nearly every movie, magazine, TV program and culture. These are often nothing more than self-centeredness cloaked in the disguise of romance.

But real love is defined by Jesus as "lay[ing] down one's life for his friends." It is "other- focused" (John 15:13). That is to say, it is not fixated on demanding its own way, fulfilling its own desires, or pleasing itself. This authentic love is evidenced through a continuing investment in others -- a sharing of one's life and resources with others. This is love.

Here's what St. Paul tells us about it:

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance" (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

St. John says that this authentic love is demonstrated best in the manner in which Jesus acted toward us. He further said that the love of Jesus Christ is the template for the love we are to demonstrate toward one another. As St. John has written: "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another" (1 John 3:16).


Which brings us back to the Beatles. There's a lot of cheap talk about love and loving. Honestly, for many people "love" comes down to getting "what they want, the way they want it, when they want it, ...and they want it right now!" But love isn't a commodity that can be bought and sold on demand. It is actually more like a art -- something that must be learned by experience and refined by constant practice. Christians acknowledge that we learn love from Jesus. As St. John said: "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

"Monkey see, monkey do." :)


So if we can't buy and sell love, if it's not an object but an art, then why do we so often act as if love arrives or thrives only in a profusion of material possessions and the trinkets and toys of life? Perhaps this is the product of living in a world where we are constantly bombarded by the message that money does, in fact, equal love. Under such a daily brainwashing it is difficult to maintain our focus on the simplicity of love's requirements. All love demands is the lover and the loved. Elementary, eh?

It's like one of the greatest of all recorded love stories states:

"Flood waters can’t drown love, torrents of rain can’t put it out. Love can’t be bought, love can’t be sold—it’s not to be found in the marketplace." Song of Songs 8:7 (The Message)

Hey, that's what God says about it! So, whatever they're offering in the marketplace, whatever they're trying to sell you in the movies, books, magazines, and TV shows you've seen, DON'T BUY IT! It isn't the love you're looking for or the thing for which you were born!

Love isn't purchased; it's home-grown. It is rooted in the heart and bears it's fruit in the lives of others!

Let's start a new wave of revolution...let's become a subversive movement...an underground movement that is a loving force on the earth. Instead of provoking conflict, let's provoke love by living lives of obvious and consistent love. A love revolution! Isn't that what Jesus started?

I love ya! (And that's the truth!)

-Old Suit

Occasioned by a Recent Death...

"Please point me to Love's graveyard"
The tearful voice did plea;
"The dreams I gave my heart to
Have turned and broken me."

"The Love that gave life meaning
Has fled and left a shell;
The Heaven of her Presence,
Vanished, leaving but a hell."

"But if I find that graveyard
Where lies extinguished love,
I'll stand there, tho' in darkness,
And pray some Pow'r above

"Will swift-descend unto me
To lift my falt'ring head
And clothe me with a power
That shall awake the dead!"

"Then Love and I will saunter
along life's path again,
Bright sunshine will yet warm us
As it did once, before then."

Don't know why . . .

Heard from a friend today about a friend of theirs -- ("a friend of a friend"? Nah! That'd be cliche.) -- who has recently suffered the indignity of being betrayed by yet another "friend" -- ("a friend of a friend of a --" oh, nevermind!).

Anyway, their world is still rocking and reeling like a January 12th in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Friend.

The very word implies much more than the dictionary hints. But at the least, you would expect to speak and act in an atmosphere of trust with someone who accepts the designation of "friend."

Yet, consider this:

Most of the damage you receive in life will come at the hand of one so named. Y0ur deepest wounds, your darkest hours, your most complete brokenness . . . all these will come from one called a "friend".

No one else knows your secrets. No one else is intimate with the chinks in your armor. Not one beside can strike from such a close and unguarded distance.

What's the solution? To abandon all friendships? This is but another form of suicide. It is to cast off life itself. Better to be a stone than to own no friends in a world built for them.

No. Risk and Life are both four-letter words. They both are by-products of -- friends.

False friends? Eventually, they have no friends . . . or any life. They just self-destruct.

The Book of Eli

Have you seen this one?

Post-apocalyptic world. Beastly as the Beast, himself, might have dreamt it. Scarce food. Scarcer water. Thugs, pimps and whores.

And a few decent people. Like Denzel Washington. He's Eli.

Great photography. Mainly superb acting. Couple of inconsistencies (King James Version Bible turns out to be a New King James Version Bible, the water in the rowboat scene is at times sweeping out to sea at a high rate of speed . . . but they continue on - able to hold their course straight and true despite their slow rowing - unrealistic). But these are such trivial issues in comparison with the excellence of the film that you'll hardly notice them.

The story highlights a couple of themes that are valuable reminders in any world age, post-apocalyptic or not. Those themes are as follows:

1. It really doesn't matter what we say we believe; it's what we live that says it best and loudest.

2. Relationships are gut-level important.

If you haven't watched it yet, go give it a look-see . . . you'll give Denzel/Eli a hand for a job well-done. (Read that again, after seeing the movie and you'll get the pun.)

Snakes alive!

.
Never cared for snakes.

They are, for the most part, silent little critters . . . moving stealthily through the grass. Without warning they rise to alarm or attack.

Most probably, though, the greater part of my discomfort with our cold-blooded belly-crawlers comes from the fact that they are so "other" -- so different from me. I simply do not understand how a snake thinks (or if they do!). They act in such an opposite manner from the human way with which I am so familiar.

Not to say there are no human "snakes." Belly-crawling, ground dwellers who lie in wait for the unsuspecting. I've seen these a-plenty . . . and the damage they can do.

Never cared for snakes. But I repeat myself.

Hypocrisy: The Drug of Choice

Didja ever notice how often we end up involved in the very evil we start out to oppose? How we end up hating the hateful? or gossiping about gossips? or being bigoted toward bigots? or looking down on others who look down on others? We judge people who judge people and resent the resentful. We become stingy with tightwads and hold grudges against grudge-holders.

Self-righteousness is a deadly poison. Humble love is its only cure. I hope that in writing this I have been thinking more of my faults than yours. . . . I hope the same for you.