Why can’t we just love one another?
The Guardian Newspaper at one stage years ago, offered the big questions for readers to respond to. One of them was ‘Why can’t we just love one another?’
Various answers came in – someone in Newcastle replied, ‘because some people come from Sunderland.’
What would you reply? Because some people are dangerous, selfish bastards, murderers, dictators? or billionaires, gypsies, crusties, communists, fascists, woke? maybe they belong to a particular nationality or religion? Or maybe they hurt you deeply.
How do we reach across that divide? Or do we even want to? As I said in my previous blog, we all have our different lenses with which we see the world and other people and that affects how we respond to them.
In my 20s I was one of those who thought that all you need is love. I was inspired by Jesus who said ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ I lived in an intentional Christian community on the North Devon Coast for 2 years and then worked for 3 years in a Christian residential drug rehab for women. Many of them had been thieves and/or prostitutes to fund their drug habits. One told me she had sold her mother’s 3-piece suite while her mother was out. Many had been sexually/physically abused as children. Most, if not all of them, had begun serious drug habits by the age of 12 or 14. One told me of injecting bleach. Then and now, my body tenses with horror at the thought of what drives a person to do that.
Yet…. Yet… She is the one who gave me the mug below. The mug which says ‘a beautiful day begins with a little love.’ I still have that mug and if the woman who gave it to me ever reads this, thank you, D.
The other side has a picture of a rainbow.
Yes, some found better lives, but many left to return to drugs, some died. The suffering was deep.
Later I married Tim, moved, worked as secretary and was also part of a church that housed homeless people in the church building. A few would join us for the daily evening services. They were all welcomed. We would stand in a circle round the altar in the middle of the large gloomy Victorian church with the vicar blessing the bread and wine. We’d be a motley collection of maybe 15 to 20 people: quiet elderly ladies, unwell people muttering, people in work clothes, monks in holy robes, and the occasional drunk man (almost always men) swaying slightly to stay upright and making inappropriate comments. One told me he didn’t expect to live till he was 30. He never did. I didn’t know anything about his background but I did see the scars on his arms from cutting himself.
My faith at the time, held out that love conquered all, that in ‘the end’ it would all work out. The fact that I was part of a group of people, a church community that welcomed everyone helped me sustain this. But I still felt like screaming at times.
After 4 years, Tim and I left that city, moved 3 times and had 3 children. 6 years later we moved to a suburban area. By then Tim was a church vicar. It was here that I met Stephen who was under section at a local psychiatric hospital.
I invited him to coffee once a week and occasionally took him to the church but people there avoided Stephen. He had a wary institutional look, wore baggy clothes with cigarette burns. He was tense and restless, would ask people for money and mutter dark things under his breath. I felt indignant on his behalf but I was also finding him challenging. He wanted to visit or ring me whenever he wanted. Guilt told me I should say yes but Self Preservation was putting up a fight.
Below is an extract from ‘Stephen from the Inside Out’ chapter 2 (please note that I read chapters back to him and he commented. These comments are in italics):
……………………………………………………………………………..
Stephen kept reminding me I was a Christian, that I was following someone who preached the way of love. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, ‘If someone asks, give’. I’d been a fully paid-up Christian for 17 years. What was the matter with me?
In my mind, rather floridly, the Guilt Queen,
meticulously dressed, appears;
one smart shoe firmly on the windpipe of Self-Preservation.
No-one was helping to share the load and I couldn’t lift the weight.
The Guilt Queen purses her lips:
‘no-one said it would be easy, Susie’.
One Sunday I was standing on the drive of our house with Stephen. He was expecting to come in. I waffled. I fumbled. I said very nicely that it wasn’t a good time for him to come over today. He wasn’t taking the hint. He glowered at me, grumpy and miserable. He didn’t want to go back to the hospital. It was horrible there. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Did I know how horrible it was?
The Guilt Queen stands behind Stephen,
inspecting a booklet entitled,
“Hypocrites of the 20th Century”.
She holds Self-Preservation in a headlock.
Did I know how horrible it was?Yes, I knew, yes, yes, yes of course… He pulled his trump card: ‘If you were Jesus, you’d invite me in’.
Suddenly Self-Preservation emits an elemental roar.
Guilt Queen is thrown. White noise.
‘I’m not bloody Jesus!’ I screeched into his face, before storming off, slamming the front door and bursting into tears.
Tim, my lovely husband and also vicar of the church, offered some basic theology,
‘You’re right. You’re not bloody Jesus.’
He then added, ‘If Stephen turns up whenever he wants, you’ll end up being overwhelmed and shutting him off for good and then nobody wins. Lay down some ground rules.’
Stephen surprises me by leaning forward and firmly agreeing with this: ‘Obviously, I needed some ground rules. I didn’t have to go back there. I was informal, I could have gone somewhere else. There was no excuse for my behaviour. All I can do is apologise. Quite frankly, I was a menace.’ He warms my heart; I hadn’t even thought of the other options available to him.
Without that piece of crucial advice, my connection with Stephen would never have survived.
………………………….
Why can’t we just love one another? What do we even mean by love? Jesus’ version was pretty hard core although he is miss quoted. He said ‘love one another as you love yourself’ – that last bit gets lost.
I grew up with a mix of love being about ‘being nice’ and also ‘being kind to those less fortunate than myself’ and very little about loving myself because (and it was true) I was very fortunate.
As a result, I didn’t feel able to be direct, so relied on people to know social etiquette: not overstaying their welcome, not ringing me at 2am or asking me for money. I did not understand that love might mean holding my own, being clear, even if I am ‘more fortunate’ than them. That love might mean, knowing that I too have needs and vulnerabilities. Perhaps most important, that maybe love means acknowledging I’m part of the mess, not above it all.
It was a vital awakening and it took me years to wake up to the fact that the problem was not Stephen – Stephen could not be anything other than he was. That was his gift.
Stephen never did ‘get better.’ He lived intensely. He suffered and he enjoyed the moments that he could. Below are 2 poems of his, one on a good day and one on a bad day:
POEM ON A GOOD DAY
'Ah the radiant beauty and scintillating charm
of the resplendent flowers, illuminating
the tranquil propensity of the garden
in the bright shining sun.
The persistently beautiful rhythm of the birds
chanting their ecstatic songs.'
Stephen
AND ON A BAD DAY
'This Life –
ah this wretched Life –
for me it seems to have no purpose, no point –
just an agonising struggle –
and I am not strong enough to overcome.
Alas, I am afraid I am not.'
Stephen
So… what about ‘all you need is love’? Do I still think that? no. I still go with ‘Love others as you love yourself,’ but I see it as a practice. We practise loving ourselves and others. We practise receiving love from others. And we practise not expecting an outcome or thanks. That, in my view is a more than a life’s work.
'In our love,
however little,
we create a web
which breaks a person's fall.'
S.Stead
Falling Awake to Life - Through Story, Myth and Mindfulness 