From the Boundary: ‘Love one another ...’ Part Three

The love of the affections: it’s something we can all share. I account myself as very fortunate that many in my daily round have reached out to me as I have also to them. My hope is that over the past couple of weeks you too have pondered the good things in your daily interactions with all those who’ve made your lives easier and more joyful, more free-spirited and rich in blessings.

 

That free-spiritedness is a very Franciscan thing and very wholesome – like home-made bread. Franciscan spirituality is a way of believing, experiencing, living and sharing in the wonder of creation in the fullness of Gospel joy. It remarks a reverence for life in all its forms, and it’s rich in spontaneity and a sense of immediacy which leave us open to everything and everyone as brothers and sisters. It’s an inclusive spirituality in which the light of hope ever graces the dawn.

 

The naturalness, openness and kindness we show people in our everyday experiences generally result in a corresponding response in them so that the entire relationship is steeped in smiles and even joy. Whenever joy comes, it’s very precious and speaks to our inmost selves. But as with those who help create it, it mustn’t be taken for granted. Other people may, after all, feel just as lonely and isolated as we sometimes do.

 

As I’ve already suggested, our love in the everyday sense doesn’t inevitably exclude the effect of the body and the sensuality of eros – though conventional religion teaches us to fight against it. It’s not something you look for, of course, and all the usual rules apply. But how can you fail to be grateful, and so also attracted, to someone who’s been kind when you’ve felt down and so also vulnerable? Do we have to fight against it, to close our eyes? Is that all we do in our relationships – bring stones to avoid sin? And is the sexual impulse really a separate compartment of life distanced from everything which conjures mystery and radiance – and if so, in the name of what? For me, God and sex, body and spirit, sacred and secular are not polar opposites. They’re inextricably interwoven, as in a tapestry, in the unity of things. But I’ll return to this in another Column. In the present context, it really isn’t that important. I’m actually just saying that we shouldn’t flee away to confession if we’re attracted to someone.

 

 But in any event, to recognise and affirm the beauty in and of someone is just the beginning of a path which may lead from eros to agape, and the path is a process of ‘holy knowing’ in which the prime mover is the loving heart, calon lan, childlike and full of wonder, creativity and reverence. To possess a loving heart means we inevitably witness to our truest selves, and everything else is largely by-the-way. We don’t need to search for it, this loving heart, just to know it’s there, to feel it. And if it expresses itself on times in sexual attraction, all that does is to remark and emphasise our sense of longing and incompleteness in the context of our mutual responses. We really don’t need to apologise for it.

 

I’ve written before in this Column about the blessedness of smiles. They’re the leitmotif, the golden thread, of zipless moments. There’s nothing really which more than this captures so completely the spirituality of the ordinary. Imagine if there were no smiles in the world. The smile, you see, stands for creation, empathy, love and joy, and it bridges the gap, if gap there be, between the sacred and the secular-profane.

 

Above all, perhaps, the zipless moment gives expression to a most sacred principle which must never be forgotten. It’s ‘philoxenia’, the principle of hospitality, the care and concern we give to strangers. Sure we’re wayfarers as we go about our business, but we’re also hosts. Neither is inferior nor superior, for the zipless moment reflects a temporary balance in the reciprocal exchange of energy. There’s no fear that either may become a hostage or parasite, for neither is there to poison the other’s wells or steal his water rights. In the dynamic of the moment host and guest cease to be strangers and aliens but implicitly recognise themselves as people in search of at least a limited permanence, understanding and comfort in all the uncertainties and dangers which mark our passage in the wild adventures of life. Indeed, the zipless moment may be God sent, and so marked by holiness, when either or both may leave petals of blessings which signal resurrection and renewal. In all of it, day by day, we gather experiences as a child gathers flowers, and learn to recognise life’s mystery in forces we shall never comprehend which yet insinuate the unity of things and our oneness with each other.

 

In principle, our zipless moments need never end. Daily we confront moments which signal the beauty of life in the most ordinary ways. I guess it’s the ordinariness which makes us miss the deep significance of our casual relationships in the daily round. Maybe we’re not observant, or aware, or sensitive enough. Maybe we suffer from the terminal stages of smart-phone syndrome. Maybe we’re just too busy scurrying about to appreciate that in our zipless encounters we become at one with people just like us.

 

There’s always an element of the unexpected about it. It’s a bit like falling in love. You don’t design or calculate it. You don’t line up the candidates like coconuts on stands. No, it creeps up unawares and then hits us before we know what’s happening.

 

Well, there we are – my ‘theology’ of zipless love, the love of the affections, love in the ordinary, in which we give and receive a sense of light and life with comparative strangers – touching open hearts in all the little by-ways of our lives, asking nothing, expecting nothing,  with no rewards except to see the joy in people’s faces. We never know who we touch with this love, how we’ve made other lives easier; but when we do, we’re so much richer for it ourselves – one world, one humanity.

 

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Self from the boundary: Imagine: our lives in love songs, moment by moment, knowing neither beginning nor end, nor colour, nor age, nor gender, nor Christian, nor Hindu, nor Jew, nor north, nor south, nor border crossings, nor passports, nor Party, nor artifice, nor manipulative tricks – just you and me shedding petals of blessings as we go (adapted from ‘Love Songs in a Zipless World’).