Love in a time of hate

[Paul Kinzelman]

Very wise post by Jim Rigby on FB, and I've copied it here for those that
don't do FB.

https://www.facebook.com/jim.rigby.12/posts/pfbid02veArVkv7kWLBUg7xqcs7dCs9X9P56aj82HqyYfXG27GDJ2ncB1RuaGG56bD11bLGl

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE IN A TIME OF HATE? by Jim Rigby, pastor at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin TX

Perhaps the most important decision we will ever make is deciding what will be our life’s foundation.

Some build their lives on obedience to the rules they were taught as children. Others build upon untestable truth claims given by some authority figure. Still others perform religious rituals hoping to magically change their conditions. But, importantly, there are also some who courageously build their life’s foundation on love.

The word “love” can be almost as mysterious as the word “God.” If we’ve never been fully loved, the word can seem like an impossible perfection. Yet the word can also be seen simply as loyalty to our entire species, to the web of life and to whatever cosmic process has brought us into being. We love individual beings, not because they have earned it, but because we realize that we are somehow interconnected. It is easier to love if we realize what we do to others we are doing to our larger self.

No religion or philosophy has the copyright to this kind of love. Augustine sometimes treated love as a balance of the four cardinal virtues -courage, temperate wisdom and justice. What does the word “love” mean in a time of injustice? Must not love become a kind of rebellion against the status quo? In a time of superstition and propaganda, must not love become a heresy against every form of mindlessness? In a time of colonialism and cannibalistic capitalism must not love call us to temper our desires for the good of others? And, in a time when so many fear strangers and new discoveries, must not love give us the courage to let go of the old familiar worlds that are dying so that we may embrace the new?

If we make love our life’s foundation we must not take it personally when we are vilified and hated by those who have no other foundation but fear. We live in strange times politically. Lin Yutang said, “When small people begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set.” The strange figures who haunt our political landscape are shadows cast from earlier chapters of our human story. In a time when the shadows of fear and hatred loom large, love can be the decision to be brave enough, temperate enough, wise enough, and fair enough to serve as greeters into the new world being born.