Non-binary, non-violent, non-scapegoating love continues to be the most interesting subject matter I wrestle with. It continues to be the only rule worth following, though I admit its own unruliness makes it very challenging to follow.
It’s not a solution, that final option we exercise to gain completeness; love is solidarity.
It’s not a product, like those endlessly offered in our capitalistic religious culture that serves to iron out our contradictions; no, love is a promise.
It’s not a device, a tool we use to create meaning; love is a design.
Love is the pattern woven into the fabric of the universe, helping all things find meaningful ways of becoming. There are, of course, other things woven into the fabric as well: insecurities, jealousies, competitive aggression, and more. Were all too familiar with those kinds of things. They are the kinds of things present in our earliest memories, both at a personal and communal level, but love has always been and always will be available.
I name all this truth. Truth is love. It or he or she or S(H)e (which is how I often spell this) is with everyone, particularly with those who are broken, hungry, and in pain. The point of the sacred text, for those of us who are interested in such things, is wrapped up in the idea that love is acutely aware of the vulnerable. This is truth. Truth isn’t propositional; truth is relational.
And now a very long but true sentence: It is a joke when ecclesiological environments fashion theological propositions around the person of Jesus, blow them up on the walls of their lobbies and foyers while ignoring (or condemning, worse yet) their neighbor, let alone the glutton, the drunkard, the unbeliever, the cripple, the deceiver, the blind, the prostitute, the foreigner, the woman, the divorced, the diseased, the tax collector, the extortionist, the queer, the enemy, the violent, the immigrant, the refugee, the adulterer, the imprisoned, the criminal, the beggar, the poor, the possessed, the powerless, the child, the leper (i.e., the least of these).
I’m not suggesting there isn’t room for a good proposition here or there, you know, a nice bullet point or two to build upon for a season in life, but in the end, all things built upon words will fade away. It’s an entirely different story though, to talk about the process of embodying words.
Ultimately, love is embodiment. In a world that has all but lost what we might call fixed referenced points, this is our new (though very old) north star. The north star is relational truth. Relational truth is love. Love is with everyone, particularly those who being crushed under the weight of the propositional crowd.
So may love be our north star.
And may all of us, all of humanity, evolve in the light of this truth.
