Love Stories

Suggested scripture: Isaiah 49:14-16a and John 15:12-17

How can we love? How can we be a people who love? How can we, in our personal and political lives, deepen our capacity to love? I want to talk about that this month, and I’ll do that by sharing three stories. Here’s the first one.

The Jewish Talmud reports that Rabbi Joshua ben Levi put a question to no less an authority than the prophet Elijah.
“Where,” Rabbi Joshua asked, “shall I find the Messiah?”
“At the gate of the city,” Elijah replied.
“How shall I recognize him?”
“He sits among the lepers.”
“Among the lepers? What is he doing there?”
“He changes their bandages,” Elijah answered. “He changes them one by one.”

To love is to relieve suffering. Since we aren’t usually called to change a leper’s bandage, let’s use a more familiar example.

People feel loved when we listen to them. Real listening, that is, not judging, analyzing, diagnosing, or problem solving. Real listening helps the one listened to to expand, to be more expansive in their being, to be more of what they can be. To have someone really listen to us allows us to give birth to more of ourselves.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says that the way to listen is with a willingness to relieve suffering. Think about that. This is not about fixing and problem solving, which usually does not help and only makes the other feel that we have not understood them. Think about a time when someone truly listened to you. Did it ease your suffering at least a little? Did it make you feel understood? Like you were not quite so alone? Real listening can relieve suffering.

You know what? That’s not how I listen, not usually. I listen to prove my point, or to prepare my defense. How do you listen?

We might love someone, but unless we learn how to listen, they may not feel our love. To love is to be willing to listen not with the intent to convert them or defend ourselves, not even with the intent to problem-solve, but only with the willingness to relieve the other’s suffering.

You might try this with a loved one. If you are really brave, try it with your enemies. Have you ever listened to someone whose religious or political views are abhorrent to you? Listened not with the intent to change them, or prove them wrong, but with the intent to relieve their suffering? Can you even imagine doing that?

To love someone is to listen with the willingness to relieve suffering.

Here’s the second story. It’s a true story, told by a surgeon who is in the recovery room with a patient and her special young man. The surgery left some deformity. The surgeon tells the story.

The woman speaks after surgery. “Will my mouth always be like this?”
“Yes, it will,” I say. “It is because the nerve was cut.”
She nods and is silent.
But the young man smiles.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s kind of cute.”
All at once I know who he is. I understand and lower my gaze.
I am humbled. One never knows where God will show up.
The young man bends to kiss her crooked mouth.
I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers,
to show her that their kiss still works.
I remember that Christ takes on human flesh, and I hold my breath and stand in awe.

Jean Vanier is the founder of l’Arche, communities around the world in which able-bodied and disabled people live together in community. Vanier says, “To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value.” Read that quote again.

Think about the one you have most trouble loving: maybe your partner, or the friend or ex who betrayed you, or someone at work. Or maybe those folks on the opposite side from you in the abortion debates. To love someone is to reveal to them their beauty and value.

When I’m in the midst of a hard time with a loved one, I sometimes remember those words. To love her is not to prove how right I am, or to win this argument or to point out her flaws. To love her is to reveal to her her beauty and value. On some days, I not only remember this truth, but I can look at myself and ask, “Am I doing that for her at this moment?” The answer is not pretty.

This stuff is hard! Whoever thought we could do it? Jesus, apparently. To love is to listen with the willingness to relieve suffering. To love someone is to reveal to them their beauty and value. The only chance I have of doing this graduate level loving is to be in community where people are making the same effort to grow into mature love, so we can encourage and sustain one another. This work is not done in isolation.

Here’s one last love story.

A four year old was at the pediatricians for a check-up.
As the doctor looked in her ears, he asked, “Do you think I’ll find Big Bird in there?”
The little girl was silent.
Next the doctor looked down her throat.
“Do you think I’ll find Cookie Monster down here?”
Again, the little girl was silent.
Then the doctor put a stethoscope to her chest.
“Do you think I’ll hear Barney in here?”
“Oh no,” the little girl replied. “Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underwear.”

This little girl knows the most important truth of her life:
she is loved….she has Jesus in her heart.

Bede Griffiths, a Christian priest who served in India and combined Christian and Hindu wisdom, said that Christianity’s gift to our specie’s wisdom is the knowledge that Ultimate Reality is love, is personal, is relational.

That might be hard for us, especially if we are well educated, or progressive thinkers. Often our idea of God is very abstract and conceptual, like the Universal Mind, or the Creative Principle. It makes no sense to talk about such abstractions loving us.

But Ultimate Reality is not impersonal. Ultimate Reality (what our tradition calls God) is Mystery, but we come closest to truth when we describe Him or Her as Beloved.

Teresa of Avila, 16th century Spanish nun and one of the great saints of Christian tradition, took her vows as a nun and changed her name to Teresa of Jesus. One day she had a radiant vision. Someone said to her, “Little one, what is your name?”
“I am Teresa of Jesus,” she answered, meaning that she did not belong to herself;
she gave all of herself in love to another.
“And,” Teresa asked, “who might you be?”
“I am Jesus of Teresa.”

We are in a personal relationship with Ultimate Reality, and that Great Mystery has our names written on the palm of Her hand.

If that is only an intellectual concept for you, if you cannot really take it in to your cells and bones that you are loved, lovable, wanted, cherished, then there is no other spiritual task as important for you as to figure out how to accept that love and know it.

Three love stories, each come to invite us to deepen our capacity to love.

The girl with Jesus in her heart and Barney on her underwear reminds us of the most important truth of our life: we are loved, precious in God’s sight.

The Messiah among the lepers invites us to love by relieving suffering, and one simple way to do that is to listen, to your special someone or your hated enemy, not in order to further your own agenda, not in order to fix, but to listen with the intent to relieve suffering.

The couple with the kiss that still works shows us that to love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value.

If you are working on any of this, take courage. You are not alone. We’re in it with you.

May God deepen our capacity to love.

                                                                              ©2007 Janice Jean Springer