From the Boundary: “Love one another …” – Part One

 

I’m going to write about love. I don’t mean about God’s love because that, as it seems to me, is largely a matter of faith. There’s too much horror and cruelty in the world to take it for granted or talk glibly about it. God’s ‘proposal’ that Abraham should sacrifice Isaac in the wilderness to prove his faith will serve as a paradigm. Was that what we call ‘tough love’? I’m not going to write about obsessional love either, like the love of Antony for Cleopatra, or Paris for Helen, or me for my new girlfriend who equally drives me wild; nor about my love for my Wife, or my kids, or my dog, or even my friends; nor again about the deepest kind of spiritual love rooted in devotion. No: I’m going to write about love in the ordinary – love in the ordinary, everyday sense which I’ll explain later, but in which we can all share.

 

First though, and by way of contrast, let me explore a little what I’m not talking about however ‘ordinary’ it appears to be. At best we can call it ‘civility’ and we encounter it every day.

 

Some while ago, I happened to be paying for some stuff at a builders’ merchant when a gentleman entered, stood in the doorway, and announced himself with a loud ‘good morning’. No-one responded. That made me feel very uncomfortable and I felt rather sorry for him – though he didn’t seem to mind at all. As we all know, that kind of polite solicitation is a very Bajan thing. It used to be common in the UK too, decades ago, but will be witnessed only very rarely now. Of course, the intended politeness might just be considered intrusive and more a way of drawing unnecessary attention to oneself. Yet some would say that if you don’t greet the world in this way you’re being impolite, and that even a rebuff is to be taken in its stride for the sake of the overriding polite gesture.

 

I remember some years go entering the upstairs open office at Diocesan House in Henry’s Lane, where a notionally VIP priest and another were deep in conversation just inside the doorway. Not wishing to intrude into their conversation, I eased gently passed them and went to the counter. The VIP priest broke his conversation and, from across the room, accused me of being rude. That came as a shock since rudeness couldn’t have been further from my mind. For good or ill, my hackles rose and I felt constrained to tell him that where I was schooled you spoke when you were spoken to.

 

And that’s the point in a way. Why should it be one-way traffic? Why was there a duty on me but not on him? Whose space was being transgressed, mine or his? Did his seniority require me to bow and scrape? What was the compulsion for me to interrupt an obviously private and serious conversation by fanfaring my presence? But you see the dilemma. If you say ‘good morning’ to a gathering, you may be rebuffed. If you don’t say it, you’re rude. Yes, maybe it’s a clash of cultures. Whatever it is, it’s no-win.

 

One-to-one encounters are different. If two people are naturally receptive they’re prepared to acknowledge each other and eye contact and a ‘hello’ or smile naturally follows. The spontaneity of it is really rather wonderful. For a moment, complete strangers become kindred spirits on life’s journey. It often happens to me on my daily pilgrimage from the ‘holy of holies’ car park to the coffee shop – and sure, we’ve all experienced it.

 

Now I’m tempted to say that the Bajan convention, other than as a social ‘sign’, really doesn’t amount to very much. It says nothing about relationships in any meaningful sense. In so far as there’s giving and receiving, it’s clearly ‘letter’ rather than ‘spirit’. As I say, at best it’s mere civility. Yet the real point, I think, is that as fake as it might appear to be it still entails a form of social discourse which transcends so much of what we experience in the contemporary world – one in which, though in some form we’re thrown together, nevertheless we’re increasingly strangers and aliens to each other. I pass through an exit door in a store and let it close with no thought for who follows. That’s not simply bad manners. It remarks the irrelevance of everyone else to me. We become merely passers-by, the priest and Levite on the Jericho road, indifferent to all the little promptings of life we experience to reach out to all those physically closest to us moment to moment. You remember what Simon and Garfunkel had to say about this in their wonderful song, ‘Sound of Silence’? It’s a song with a very Gospel ring. You remember?

 

“And in the naked light I saw/ten thousand people maybe more/people talking without speaking/people hearing without listening/people writing songs that voices never share.”

 

For so many, the world seems such a lonely and friendless place. On times, it seems indifferent, even hostile, a world where people talk but don’t really say anything or hear but never really listen. And increasingly for so many, not least those suffering from iPhone syndrome, the world is theirs to the exclusion of everyone else. It’s a world which has only ME at its centre. That’s sad isn’t it? It misses the whole point of life. For if you think about it, we couldn’t survive without each other. So why don’t we cherish what we have?

 

Well, what we all have, what we can all share, is what I call ‘love in the ordinary’, a love which entails listening, sharing and touching in everyday encounters – where, as they say, it all happens. By ‘touching’, I don’t mean physical touching but rather touching in the sense of relationship. Whether we realise it or not, no matter our age, gender, orientation or race, we all cook and warm ourselves before the same fire and dance the dance of life to the same flute. Consciously or not, we all explore our relationship with the Ultimate in our ordinary, everyday experiences. Indeed, I derive so much of whom I am from who you are. Yes – ultimately one world, one humanity. John Lennon summarised it all, despite the element of wishful thinking, in the song ‘Imagine’ – “Imagine all the people sharing all the world”. Why then do we make such a mess of it?

 

Till the next time – go safely.

 

Sufi Rumi from the boundary: “You are God’s lion. God named you men ‘lion’. Why then do you make yourselves less than you are?” ( adapted)

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