Love Can Show the Way

“Love is used to getting its ass kicked.”

- Cathleen Falsani

I was watching the news this week as clip after clip is played of white “men” marching with torches.  “Men” carrying flags of defeated symbols of hate, being brought to a new and frightening sort of life by the sweat on their brows and the spit from their mouths as they shout racist, bigoted messages of hate.  On the other side of the lines we see an understandable anger rising up in people who still remember stories of “men” showing up to the front lawns of black churches and their family home.  Men and women whose families were lost to Nazi “progress”, remembering that ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.  It only grows and festers like a gaping wound in the side of a nation.

My 7 year old daughter Alivia was sitting and watching all of this as well.  I didn’t realize that she was watching it until I noticed her plug her ears and shout out “PEACE, PEACE, PEACE!”.  Tears came to my eyes as I realized the profound affect that all of this was having on her. She felt the dissonance between what she hears on a Sunday morning about a new kingdom being ushered into this world and what she was seeing in Charlottesville, VA.  We took a minute to talk about what was happening and I reassured her, as much as I could, considering the way that all of this has impacted me as well, that everything would be ok.  I was thinking about it a little bit later that day as I was trying to practice for what I would say if Alivia, or any of my other kids, asked me to help them make sense of the state of the world.  I was reminded of an answer I heard on a podcast a week or so ago.

The question was posed to Cathleen Falsani, an author, blogger, journalist and all around amazing human being.  The interviewer asked her how do we see the state of the world, all of the crap that is happening all around, the refugee crisis, potential wars around the world, actual wars occurring in numerous countries, a President that seems to be clueless when it comes to the plight of poor and sick people in this country.  When we turn on the news or look at social media it is easy to quickly become overwhelmed.  When the interviewer had finished his question, she answered in the calmest and coolest way, “You know, love is used to getting its ass kicked”.  She went on to remind the interviewer and us, the listener, that love has a long history of getting knocked down but it keeps getting back up.  Jesus taught us that when love gets slapped across the face that it turns the other cheek.  She said that “love isn’t afraid to get dirty”.  Because in the end, whenever that is, love actually wins. 

I was mowing my lawn when I first heard this interview and I must have looked a bit odd because I was actively crying.  I don’t mean like tears in my eyes.  I mean full lump in my throat, let out a couple of sobs kind of cry.  This is the challenge in believing in the way of love.  Love doesn’t look like the royal family sitting at the place of honor with all of the privilege and power.  Love doesn’t look like the one with all of the influence and charisma to force others to follow its way.  Love looks dirty, love looks foolish, love doesn’t run from harm but rushes to it.  Love doesn’t pre plan and consider the possible danger and damage, love is willing to lose because it has already won. 

This is good news.  The good news for me is that I know what it feels like to get beat up, spiritually and emotionally. I know what it feels like to feel too dirty to come near to the love of God.  I know what it feels like to be in a depression so deep that I wasn’t sure that I could fight another day.  I know what it feels like to sit down at the end of the day and feel like I got my ass kicked.  But love, has been getting its ass kicked since the beginning of time and it keeps getting back up.

So what do we tell our kids?  What do we tell ourselves?  Even though it looks like there is no hope, if we look closely, there are signs of hope all around.  I have seen clergy standing in the gap at these demonstrations, shielding the innocent from hateful speech.  I have seen unity among those who will not stand by and let racism hide behind hoods and positions of power anymore.  I have seen conviction from many who were living blind to the realities of white privilege, including in myself.  So I tell my kids, and myself, that love does get its ass kicked, that it seems that evil is all around and yet He that lives within us, within the strength of community and the power of its witness, is greater than all of the evil that exists within this world.  I will tell them that when love gets knocked down, it always gets back up.  I will tell them that when love gets slapped that it turns the other cheek and that it is never afraid to get dirty. No, that it insists on getting dirty. 

As for our reactions?  We have to get involved.  This means supporting people and organizations, financially, those who are actively resisting this type of bigotry and racism.  This means attending rallies in support of the resistance.  This means naming the ways that we have contributed to the creation of this society that has put up hurdles and obstacles for the poor, people of color, refugees, women, and the entire LGBTQ community.  This means teaching our children that this type of behavior is wrong, it is ungodly, it is demonic and it will not stand in our homes, our schools, our churches and most importantly, in our hearts.  When we see evil speech, we name it is as so.  When our local and state officials seem to be standing on the sidelines, we urge them to speak out.  When we witness a person being discriminated against or treated poorly, we speak up and come to their side.  This is the honor and the challenge of sharing this earth with such a diverse collection of people.  We get to learn about and from each other and in the meantime we learn about ourselves. 

Cathleen Falsani closed her answer about love by reading the lines from a David Wilcox song “Show the Way”, and I’m not sure I could ever say it so well so, I will do the same.

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What's stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?

He's almost in defeat
It's looking like the evil side will win
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins, it is

Love who makes the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone

In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way