"Love Them Anyway"
As I'm still thinking through my last trip to CO, I'm also thinking about the current upheaval in the Episcopal Church and it almost seems like they are related. I liked the analogy made at Father Jake's about how the current situation in the church is like coming out. I'm definitely stuck in stage three with my parents.I alternate between wanting to just acquiese to them and wanting to just argu with them. I can't figure it out and I'm almost trying to do both at the same time and it's not working and it's not helping me.
So I've been doing some thinking. And some reading. I've been reading a lot of religous blogs lately and I found the sermon that Bishop Robinson gave during the last General Convention. Needless to say I've been thinking about it a lot.
We are family (mine and the Anglican Communion). We were created by God and God loves us all. We aren't enemies. We're just friends who haven't figured out a way to communicate properly yet. We haven't figured out a way to reach a common understanding on an issue that is important, but pales in comparison to the love we have for each other, and for God. We shouldn't stop trying to communicate, but we need to keep trying in a calm, loving, manner to help our friends, our neighbors, understand that God loves us all. What should we do when we are called "disgusting or revolting" or "a cancerous lump" or worse, we should Love Them Anyways.
A couple of years ago I went to a photo exhibit at the Corcoran. It was an exhibit of pictures taken during/after 9/11. The room was big and it was covered in pictures. No graceful spacing, no special lighting, no open spaces at all. Starting at about a foot off the floor to about 10 feet up, there were row after rows of pictures. Pictures were hung across the room on wires from wall to wall that carried more pictures. It was wonderful, heartrending, and just overwhelming. And the one picture that I member, of all of those thousands of pictures, is just a man wearing a T-shirt. And written on the t-shirt it said:
Love Thy Neighbor
Love Thy Black Neighbor
Love Thy Gay Neighbor
Love Thy Muslim Neighbor
Love Thy Disabled Neighbor
Love Thy Homeless Neighbor
Love Thy Asian Neighbor
Love Thy HIV+ Neighbor
Love Thy Hispanic Neighbor
Love Thy Neighbor
p.s. I promise an up, lite, funny posting soon.
posted by Trey @ 8:05 PM
1 Comments:
Glad to see you're on the right track!
Post a Comment
<< Home