May 6, 2012

A bright white moon in a clear sky last night, closest to earth, looking almost too big for the sky to support, like it might fall and roll around on the ground.  This morning a pearl gray sky, flat and nearly white, tinted the vaguest pink at the horizon.  The air is still and quiet, no birds singing nearby yet, only the cat silently roaming through the short grass, not appearing to be looking for anything, just wandering.

Sunday, the morning for the blessing.  I realized I rarely use the bible for the Sunday blessing, probably because, deep in my mind, I am thinking to make the blessing more universal, and poetry is universal, but last month Michelle Erica Green posted this on her blog.  I go to her blog The Little Review for the photos from all sorts of interesting places, and the photos of birds and flowers and all kinds of wildlife.  She talks daily about what she and her family do and always posts a poem to start with, and often they are familiar and sometimes surprising.  She seems to have a knack for picking poems that resonate with me, that make some kind of connection.  She posted this because it was read at a memorial service for someone she knew.

1 Corinthians 13
New International Version

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,

but have not love, I am only a resounding gong

or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy

and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have a faith that can move mountains,

but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor

and surrender my body to the flames,

but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,

it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts,

always hopes, always perseveres.

It's the message of love that captured me, that more than all the good works, the knowledge, the faith, it's love that's what is needed.  The kind of love that sometimes seems in short supply, not the love of the letter of the law, not the love of the things that divide us, but the love that is patient and kind, keeps no record of wrongs, that protects and trusts and hopes and perseveres.  How many times in all sorts of holy books is love given as the answer?  That love is what is important, if you love in the way of this passage, you cannot enlist in destruction, in taking lives for some holy cause, in anger, in pride over knowing what is unknowable, the pride of thinking there is only one way to love, only one way to come to God.  You love in abundance, you love even those you can't understand, who are foreign to you, whose lives seem to have no meaning beyond being bent on keeping score, on trying to make everyone tow some invisible line that only they can define.  I also think that it's meaningful to me personally that it says love is not rude.  It keeps me thinking that even so slight a thing as being rude moves away from love, that people who are routinely rude and obnoxious have not found the way of love yet, and they keep pushing it away with their behavior.  So, this morning, a bible verse, but one that makes no restriction on love, that embraces everything and everyone, one that is kind.  Kindness is a hard ideal to live up to, but worth the effort I think, while you are being kind, it's hard to be afraid.