be true to love

Your fidelity to love, that is all you need

No day will then match your strength

What was once a fear or problem will see

You coming , and step aside… or run.

                                         Hafiz (A Year with Hafiz, p 184)

__________________________________________

 

The great commandment

Love God

 

In other words….

There are many words, great words,

But in other words

 

Have your primary allegiance be the sacred

Not an ideology

Not a religious dogma

Not money

Not power

Not a particular leader or party

Not a nation

 

But that which we cannot define and contain

But which we know

Which we experience

 

If we experience it at all,

As Love

 

Love God

And then love your self

As a the offspring of love

 

If you are created in love

And filled with love

How can you not love yourself?

 

And then live love

Let love ooze out of your soul

 

Because love is the true power

 

We blithely make the affirmation that “love wins”

 

I wonder sometimes whether we believe it

If we believed it would we not live it?

Would we not attempt, as Paul puts it, “to overcome evil with good”?

 

Yet look at how we live!

Angry and fearful

All too often retributive, sometimes cruel

 

Look at how we live, grasping for power and money

Heedlessly trampling the poor and the vulnerable

In our heedless rush

 

What would it look like to have a fidelity to love?

I try to imagine it sometimes

 

What would it look like to have a fidelity to love

When I am faced with betrayal?

What would it look like to have a fidelity to love,

If I were oppressed?

What would it look like to have a fidelity to love

When assailed by hate?

 

When Jesus was faced with those things

Fidelity to love looked like the cross

 

What would it look like for me?

What would it look like if I really lived out what I piously echo,

“love wins”

 

It is scary to contemplate

The cost is so great

The risk is so high

 

From the perspective of this world

Such a radical stance is foolish

Even the foolishness of the cross

 

I can only catch the briefest, glimmering glance

For it is rare

 

I suspect it looks like generosity

And forgiveness

And a radical commitment to justice

 

I can wander cautiously down those paths

But can I plunge into the depths of that world

Heedlessly?

Whole heartedly?

 

And if I did, what would that look like?

And am I brave enough,

Do I have courage enough

To walk all the way

To the cross?

 

Do I have enough love

That fear, and hate

Greed and racism

Will scatter when they see me coming?