I tried something a bit different this morning. No, not a new brand of breakfast cereal, but something else. As I was leaving my apartment this morning I was asking of God two things: that he help me to be the kind of person today that he has created me to be, and that he would also show me what I should do in order to help along the process. Kind of like a variation on the Serenity Prayer, I would suppose.
I think I'm trying to be more careful to consider others before I react to their bad behaviour, or otherwise criticize, judge and sentence them. Not easy, I suppose, but there is something empowering about treating others with kindness. It is like that saying I saw painted on a sidewalk, back in 1971, when I was just fifteen years old, but already morphing rapidly into a young man: "Be generous with your love: it's the only treasure that grows as you give it away."
Funny, isn't it? So many other boys my age were idolizing and seeking to emulate their favourite sports heroes, movie stars and rock and roll legends. Me? I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to faithfully reflect Christ in my life. And here I am almost fifty years later, still wanting to reflect Christ in my life, and still pondering those same beautiful words, be generous with your love, because it's the only treasure that grows as you give it away.
This shouldn't be so difficult. I think that what makes living in real love such a challenge is that we live in an environment that could hardly be called loving, or favourable to love. With the current miasma and turbulence of greed, competition and selfishness, one has to take on almost a monastic way of life in order to really live as one untouched by the world. And in many ways, that is exactly how I have come to live. For me, this is the best response I am yet able to give to God's call on my life. To live simply, honestly, and without distractions so that I can really stick closer to God. But to be really close to God, we also have to stay open and connected to those around us, because Christ only really becomes truly present to us when we are actively loving others.
Twenty years later I was in London and thirty-five years old. Much of London seemed to have an open soundtrack of soul, rhythm and blues, reggae and rap music. There was one refrain I often heard, sung in a deep baritone, "If you love the life that you live, then you should live your life for love." Now I could be getting the words wrong, because I am unable to find this on Uncle Google, or possibly I got the lyrics just a little bit wrong, which might have been a little collaboration between the Holy Spirit, my ears and my unconscious to penetrate me with such a valuable message.
And here I am now, reconfronting this mystery, this mystery of love, or rather, it is this mystery of love that is confronting me. We do not ask the questions, but the questions ask us, Gentle Reader, and we go on living as the question being asked, not until we morph into an answer but until we have become entirely absorbed by the humility of our confessed ignorance. I no longer even think of asking what love is. But I simply ask love, and now, I think that love is now beginning to ask me.
Our lives are but question marks on the pages of life. Sometimes exclamation marks. Never periods.
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