Awesome!

Just for the record, I published my thoughts on "love" five days before Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical on the same subject. I guess it's true what they say about great minds :-)

I've been trying to focus this week on the fact that I'm a walking, talking miracle! I awaken each morning to begin miraculous feats of breathing, eating and thinking that even the most technologically advanced enterprises have yet to duplicate. I drive to work, compute all day, get caught up on world events while eating supper in front of the television, and go to sleep with the confidence that my atomic alarm clock will punctually wake me up to start the routine all over again.

Because it is a routine probably explains why I fail to be in awe of my life, why I take what is so truly amazing for granted. When I don't regard even my own life as extraordinary, it certainly stands to reason that I'm not going to think that anyone else is particularly special either. When the actual miracle is viewed as mundane, I'm drawn to the sensational and extreme to satisfy my longing for the remarkable.

Albert Schweitzer aspired to revere life. His is an example that I find worthy of emulating, and a good start is to quit thinking of my life as anything less than the miracle it truly is. As I grow in such an understanding, I cannot help but hold others with higher regard as well. I cannot explain why life isn't perceived as precious until something threatens to take it away, but that's not going to prevent me from counting each moment as awesome, starting now!

All You Need Is Love

Love. How can such a simple word be used to describe such an infinitely complex subject? The Beatles sang that it is all we need. Sunday school songs proclaim that it is God. It persists as the elusive Holy Grail of enlightened aspiration.

The holidays presented me with ample opportunity to contemplate the meaning and nature of love. "Love came down at Christmas" and all that. Because love requires the context of relationship, family was a natural place to turn for better understanding.

Romantic love is all about sunshine and flowers, all about feeling good. But romantic love isn't what family is all about. Indeed, such a notion quickly becomes creepy. Still, the misconception of love being all good with none of the bad leads to ugly distortions.

True love is holistic; by that I mean it includes the sorrow as well as the joy, the agony as well as the ecstasy. When someone I love hurts, I hurt with them. When someone I love feels good, it makes me feel good, too. True love cannot exist in isolation because it's viability absolutely requires relationship.

"What the world needs now is love, sweet love." I agree completely, but would be more comfortable substituting "true" for "sweet." I love and am loved, truly. Such a statement is, however, valid only when it is unconditional. Let me learn to love more completely and selflessly so that I may help bring this world one step closer to being a loving one.

A New Day

Rachel and Steve could not have given a more thoughtful birthday/Christmas gift: making the old man feel like he still has something to say! The Growing in Christ experiment was by definition limited in its scope, but Incite will know no boundaries but my own. My worldview will always be theological, but it's going to be fun to explore how that can include so much beyond the religious/spiritual realm. Thanks, guys!

I watched a retrospective of John Lennon's agitation of the Nixon Administration on the History Channel last night and found myself hoping that I might somehow become a similar thorn in the side of the Bush Administration. This is not intended to nurture the delusion that I am in any way on par with Lennon, but is rather the compliment of wanting to imitate someone who openly confronted the corrupt establishment.

This is the weekend when we remember and honor another who also stood up to hatred and injustice in such a way that the world was forever changed for the better. Martin Luther King Jr.'s worldview was also theological, and perhaps no one has better exemplified how that transcends the traditional understanding of church and religion. George W. Bush may claim to be a Christian, but King walked the way of the Christ. What a profound difference!

http://www.truemajority.org/mlk.html

Thanks again, Rachel and Steve, for your encouragement and support!