It has a lot to do with love

Beatrix stood on the stairs, skinny arms folded.  "No."

"Come on, Bea.  Come on down and eat breakfast."  My voice caught an edge as I added darkly, "Or you'll lose part of your allowance."

She climbed a few stairs, slowly and experimentally.  "No."

"You'll lose screen time."

Bingo.  She stomped downstairs, arms still crossed.  I put my arms around her.

"You're tired, honey?"

"No!"  Then her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip jutted out.  "Elspeth woke me up this morning.  She said, ACHOO, really loudly, like that."

I steered her toward the breakfast table.  "Sorry, honey, but it's time to stop being a punk and eat breakfast."

She sat up and ate eggs and strawberries and soon she was back to her cheery Bea self.  She's not a morning person, and neither am I, but the days are long gone when I could act like a punk.  And most days, I don't even feel like it.  It's got something to do with the healing power of caffeine.  And love.  Yes, I should add, it's got something to do with love.

That simplistic phrase played itself over and over again in my head as I walked this morning:  "This has a lot to do with love." First I thought of Beatrix this morning, arms folded, and the way she melted a little when I gave her a hug.  Then I thought of the other day, when she poked my stomach, mapped with thick, white stretch marks and asked again, "What are those?"  Those, my dear have a lot to do with love.  I thought of how I found my clothes in my teenager's room and how I won't say anything about it.  That has a lot to do with love.  I thought of a friend of mine who is willfully being misunderstood by her teenager but keeps saying "I love you."  Clearly, that has a lot to do with love.  I thought of cleaning up after my stupid, neurotic dog yesterday and thought, that had a lot to do with love.

The flowering trees, overlaid with that statement, seemed more wonderful, and as I walked, these words looping in my mind, the world around me seemed to soften.  Not that it got less complicated and suddenly turned into a Disney movie, but knots of judgement and anger begin to unravel when your mind engages and your eyes begin to see things through the lenses of love.  As I rounded the corner, a man in ragged pants and matted hair kind of weaved down his front walk, lighting up a cigarette.  I tried it:  "That has a lot to do with love."  I believed, that man is loved and worthwhile.

Really, everything having a lot to do with love is recognizing that this world and every person in it, and every worm and millipede and bird and plant---everything that moves under the sun--has their being in Love.  The light of God shines in everyone--it's what the Quakers believed and it's what made them countercultural, standing up for the rights of indigenous people and minorities that every other group marginalized and destroyed in the name of God.

God is Love.  We've heard it a lot, seen in printed on T-shirts and teddy bears and church marquis. It is a saying easily regulated to Christian bookstores and sentimentality.  But do we really even begin to understand what that means?  Do we begin to understand that our entire lives should be transformed, and that we will inevitably be deeply uncomfortable?  Love pushes us out of our familiar safe places.  But there is nothing more powerful that transforms, challenges, and ultimately, saves us.

As I reached the end of the path, I began to think about how our country is actively moving toward hatred, marginalization, and fear.  Trump, a man full of xenophobic rhetoric and violent bigotry, boasts blithely that he has the support of Christian evangelicals, a group rooted in a belief in a Christian God, a God of love.  Something is deeply wrong.

Strong, challenging, brave, truth-telling love.  Love that is kind and gentle, love that perseveres, bears all things, hopes in all things.

I walked around the corner toward home with my vision of a world overlaid and undergirded and shot through with love and suddenly music charged the air.  The neighbors were playing a waltz ridiculously loudly--way too loudly for a neighborhood, and yet!  The music swept past their fence and carried me up the hill toward home.

As I walked and the waltz faded, I felt transported to our house in a small coal mining town six years ago.  A middle-aged man lived across the street from our red farmhouse with his mother.  He often came out onto the front porch to drink slowly from large bottles of red wine.  After his mother passed away, he inherited some money, which he spent rather wildly.  He always struck me as a sad man, and it must have been terribly lonely to be gay in a small, conservative town near the border of West Virginia.  One evening, after his mother had died and his relationship with a companion ended, I stood out in the garden near twilight, weeding.  Suddenly, the sleepy, quiet air came alive with music.  Our neighbor stood outside on his front porch.  I think he was drunk.  The aching, sweet violins of Vivaldi's Four Seasons played, much too loudly for our quiet neighborhood.  And yet-- I stood in the garden in the gathering darkness as the music washed over me, linking my spirit with the broken mourning of my neighbor.  I will never forget that evening, will never forget the agony and longing that rolled down our street, past closed door after closed door, from our neighbor's porch.  The music articulated what words could not.  The music hooked me, pulled me into the experience of my neighbor, into the universal experience of being loved and heartbroken.

Perhaps it would be better if we communicated with music more often, flinging open our doors to share the too-loud soundtrack of our hearts.  Music can give us a common language; you can't or shouldn't argue with it just as you can't, or shouldn't, argue with the overflowing of someone's agony or joy.  I think, if we are honest, we realize, deep down, that our most important experiences have everything to do with what we have in common, with what is universal--and what is more universal than love?  People are just people, and love is love, and families are families--no matter how different--so why, why, can't we swallow our bitterness and wrap our imaginations in compassion?  Because love is hard, and hatred is easy; because understanding takes work and bigotry comes naturally.  But my family, and my neighborhood, and my community, and this wide world, could be so much better.  It has a lot--no, it has everything--to do with love.