Love in Ordinary Time

I come from a religious tradition that often espouses love but does not practice it. In fact, we are often bold enough to say that God in Godself was, is and forever more will be love. Those boldly proclaiming such theology will then utter judgment and condemnation from pulpits, Bible studies and "Christian" Facebook groups. They do so swiftly enough that the discrepancy is hard to call out. It's a conundrum but Christianity isn't the only realm where such conundrums about love abound.

About three years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend who told me flat out that she would not have one-on-one coffee with a married man, whom she was mentoring at church, because of "how it would look." Not because anything was going on there, but because it might look like something was going on there. Heterosexual normativity even limits cisgender heterosexuals. What a pity.

Recently I had Sushi with a mentor of mine who is a lesbian, partnered, and in her 60's. As the conversation got deeper--intimacy going and back and forth between as stories of truth, suffering and power enfolded the space--I found myself wondering about how much I love this womyn sitting across from me. For just a second, I felt shame. Am I supposed to love this much? She's partnered. I'm married. There's almost a 30 year age gap between us. “Is this right?” I wondered internally. Where does such a question come from? Both of us have queer sensibilities when it comes to economies of love—meaning we believe there is enough to go around (abundance) and we don't have to relate to one another from guardedness (scarcity). So why was I questioning the wealth of love between us?

Conditioning.

My place of employment just had a staffing change. Our former Office Administrator Vickie, retired and we hired Jaimie to take her place. For weeks I kept struggling with how I could possibly talk about how much I was going to miss Vickie without offending Jaimie and how excited I was to start working with Jaimie without offending Vickie. It's not a zero sum game.

Two days ago my son, who is one year old, was prancing around the house in a diaper, dancing to Bruno Mars' latest hit "Uptown Funk." The whole scene was so dang adorable that I blurted out "Oh little one, you are my favorite!" before scooping him up and giving him kisses all over his baby belly. Before too long I felt guilty about calling him "my favorite" and thanked God his sister, who is almost 3, was sleeping when it happened. But why? He was my absolute favorite iteration of reality in that moment. That moment of adoration didn't take an iota of love away from his sister. Later that day while rocking the 3 year-old sister to sleep I decided to compensate as I was rocking her to sleep: "Oh Waya (her nickname), you are my favorite in the whole world." Guess what? That was totally true.

Often I hear people lament aloud and openly express fears they carry about human civilization not being able to get along. There are so many cultural, religious, generational, class, gender, dis/ability, sexuality, and personality differences among us. How can we possibly get along? How can we live without killing/destroying each other? When I watch the news or hear pundits going on about global realities, I can ask these questions too. Even more than questions about the capacity to get along in our difference, I wonder about the extravagance of love we feel across difference.

I think we love each other way more than we admit or live into. For some reason that feels a lot less scary and a lot scarier all (at the same time) than conversations about destruction and violence.

Love in Ordinary Time.