2021-12-14:
Love is Love is Love

A recent conversation over breakfast about the challenges of being a gay mayor and what we are teaching our children inspired the following musing at 4:14 am this morning, which I offer onto you as a reminder to all of us that our holiday spirit is not one that should be manifested or grounded solely in consumerism; but rather it’s origins and mandate lie in a manger.

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LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE

Channeling Leo Buscaglia with my best Mr. Rogers voice, I ask no one in particular, but everyone all the same: “What is love?”

Is it understanding, acceptance, consideration, kindness, compassion, commitment, courage…Is it tough?

All of the above?

Is it as ephemeral as “Ummm, I love this sandwich!”

Or as everlasting as a positive grounding childhood experience that resonates for a lifetime?

Can everyone experience and enact and feel love?

I will answer that one: yes.

So, love essentially has no limits than? Essentially.

Whether you’re a man or a woman or a human or something therein and in-between, love is an inherent right.

Despite differences of beliefs and values and morals, or lack thereof, no one can take that away from you.

Love is a right, it is a feeling, it is an experience and an aspiration and ultimately, what makes us human. And I dare say, the more we love and the more love there is, the more human we are.

So love your neighbor, love each other, love your friend and family and significant others. And let others do the same as they see fit.

As someone once espoused, whose birthday many of us are about to celebrate around the world - whether we know it or not:

“Do onto others as you would have done onto you.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” In other words, as Pope Francis recently said, “Who am I to judge?”

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”