![]() | ![]() In the Middle of the Story
[Love is] how we stay decent in indecent times. -- Michael Curry
If I were writing a novel, this would be where the old sorcerer who is the hero's companion lets go and dies, where you have no idea how the happy ending that you know is coming will happen.
It feels just too much when your country seems to turn against the ideals that have been drilled into you from childhood, that you knew weren't exactly shared by everyone, but didn't realize just how widespread the hate and fear was.
I'd guess, as long as I'm doing a postmortem like everyone else seems to be as a way of dealing with the loss, that the constant electronic presence of the world also has something to do with it, ever reminding us that there are seemingly insoluble problems out there (war and poverty), monsters we don't understand and don't want to believe (disease and climate change and artificial intelligence) and at the same time there are people who are so rich they can blithely ignore all of these existential crises while we're struggling for our daily bread.
It's so easy to light our torches of jealousy and hate, to follow the hate and fear mongers, to storm the castle. We forget that the castle is stone and the village is wood and thatch, that protests motivated by hate end up only burning our own homes.
Love is hard. Love takes time. Love is the slow dribble of a spring eating away at the foundations of the castle, so that eventually a touch can bring down the tower, a hug can penetrate the walls to the scared insecure persons within.
You can't overcome hate with hate. You can't hate the hater into love whether the hate is inside yourself or in the world.
Love is not weak, it is hard work, it takes muscle you don't even know you have, to continue the long slow work of justice, to pick yourself up when your house has burned and all around you is charred and smoking, to build again when all about you seems to rage and tear down, but your work will be fulfilled, perhaps long after you've gone, but love will overcome.
Love stands where fear hides. Stands against the pitchfork held by fear and looks the person, the real person holding it, in the eye and has compassion.
Love listens where hate shouts. Listens to the insecurities feuling the hate and doesn't deny them.
Love is stubborn and doesn't give up.
Love goes out the door and goes about everday business, because it is necessary no matter how small.
7 Nov 2024
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