The conflict, tension, and pressure of modern life are a form of contemporary violence. We allow our lives to be sucked up and carried away by scores of conflicts,  concerns, and arguments; we surrender to too many devices, too many problems, too much bad and angry news,  too many urgent demands.

It cuts off our capacity and will to love. When Facebook is our God and moral beacon, our souls are in peril.

Thomas Merton believed that the Law Of Love is the deepest law of our nature, not something that is extraneous and alien to being human. Our nature itself inclines us to love and to love freely.

In fact, he wrote, love is the fundamental building block of the universe, love is our true identity.

He or she who loves can find their own way to God. He or she who doesn’t can’t find their God, not in power, lies, or money.

Tonight, I asked Maria what love meant to her, a question I have never thought to ask her, even though I’ve often thought about it.

She look up from her computer, annoyed at the question – she was blogging and trying to concentrate – and snarled at me. For a moment, I was stung.

Then she turned to me, having thought about the question for a second or two.

“You,” she said, “when I think about love I think about you. I didn’t know what love was until I met you.” And then she added, “stop bothering me. I’m working.”

Right there, I thought, that is us. That is what I love most about us.

I believe that was the most important and meaningful thing anybody has ever said to me.

I was speechless for a moment, perhaps stunned a bit. I can’t be worthy of that, I thought. She will see me one day.

 

I let her return to her work and then I understood what I wanted to write tonight and what I think that this year has taught me and meant to me.

Anyone writing honestly about love has to face the turbulence raging in our country. I have to think about Mr. Trump.

Because if she had asked me the same question, I would have given the same answer.

People ask me sometimes if I hate Donald Trump, and I believe that the answer is no, even as I concede I hate much of what he stands for. I feel a lot of things about him, but not hatred.

But I can’t say with any honesty that I can love him, either.

What is it that really bothers me about him? More than anything,  there seems to be no love inside of him. He seems to live in a cruel,  cold, and angry space, filled with hatred and grievance.

I can’t see or find any love.

There is no one and nothing in his life that he seems to love other than power and money and domination. He is full of anger and this seems to be what so many people love the most about him.

What does his movement love, if not just themselves? And how can I write honestly about this year and the past few years without thinking about this great disturbance of the soul?

Can I come to love him and them? Not yet.

Is it a spiritual goal that I want and need to pursue? Not yet. For now, my spiritual life will need to work and live around that black and ugly hole. I just can’t focus on that in my life now and continue to do my work.

That’s the divide for me, the one that hurts and stabs and saddens me the most. I take no pleasure in disliking anyone.

And Thomas Merton, my spiritual guide, has some beautiful thoughts for me to consider:

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war and hatred. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, no an another.”

I love those words, I have good work ahead of me.

I was in a doctor’s office when a man opposed to vaccines was shouting at a nurse that she had no right to talk to him about vaccinations or even ask about them, she couldn’t get him to start screaming, it was almost as if he had been taken over by demons.

He was offensive, almost violent, he couldn’t stop shouting and moving in a menacing way, and I wondered if I would have to call the police or even intervene.

Frustrated, the nurse finally yelled, “don’t you love your children. Don’t you love your wife? Don’t you want them to be safe?”

He shouted back, “yes, yes, this is why I won’t be vaccinated, don’t you see?” It was mesmerizing, two people, each invoking love in different ways for different reasons. Could I learn to love this angry and rude man? I honestly don’t know.

I never claim to be better than I am. Or worse.

The trick is to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see the world the way they see it. That is difficult, but I’ve done it more than once. It is a worthy thing to think long and hard about. Talk about contemplation.

Like Maria, I didn’t know what love was until I met her.

That was the foundation of our friendship, then our love, now our marriage.

She taught me what love was, and as I learned what it was, I was able to begin to love others: the residents at the Mansion, the refugee children at Bishop Maginn High School, friends like Sue Silverstein.

I even began to love myself, and that was the key that opened the door.

Freedom, I believe, is the ground in which love thrives and desires for the beloved that they become fully the people they were created to be.

“The beginning of this love,” wrote Merton, ” is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

Although we didn’t know it for a long while, this was the foundation of our love. We let each other be perfectly ourselves, to never try to twist the other into our own image. I understood from the first – I don’t know how, to be truthful – that if I did not love Maria for who she was, then I did not love her at all.

Our job is to love others without pausing to inquire whether or not they are worthy. I know I am not worthy, but being loved is the joy of my life. What we are asked to do is love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

Because it’s my job doesn’t mean I can wave a magic wand and be there. I am not a monk living in a hermitage in a monastery. I am surrounded by real life.

I realize that it is this absence of love that makes me feel people are not worthy, even if it is not my business, or anybody’s business, to judge one another. People judge me all the time and tell me what to do, I never tell anyone to do. I do sometimes judge others.

This is sometimes a gaping hole in my own spirituality, and I don’t know if I can fill it or not, it was not the way I was raised or that I loved.

I haven’t had the revelation of being born again or of suddenly finding God in my heart and soul. So I have to learn to do it myself.

I am beginning to do this in my silent meditation and contemplation. In a world of noise and anger and cruelty, a time of confusion and conflict, I need to seek out silence, inner discipline, and peace. In such a place love can breathe and blossom. I feel it stirring, breathing, rising.

What is love for me? You.