Serendipity, Therapy, Love…and more

If you are blessed to have a therapist like I have in the elf, you could never completely let them go It has been awhile since I saw her, but post-birthday I wanted a check-in/check-up. See, I’m in a complicated relationship. That might be an oxymoron (like dysfunctional family) but this is the meaty juicy kind of love that fills you up so much that you cannot let it go despite it having some significant barriers to what you want and think love should look like. I needed to mull over words like “codependence, love addiction, attachment hunger” and more.

Luckily for me, my therapist prefers words like “bullshit” and “fuck”.

When I walked in, she had a book by her that I owned and loved (Cries of the Spirit in case you are interested). She mentioned stumbling on a piece she was sharing with someone and we settled into therapy and didn’t discuss further…right away.

About halfway through our examination of the current status of said relationship, she said “Hmmm. Let me read you this piece and see if it resonates.” (When she say stuff like this, you can be sure it will).

And it did.  Here it is for you. Print it off. Mine is now on my fridge where all important things reside.

Much love,

Kelly

Our Passion for Justice – Carter Heyward

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling, not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being “drawn toward”. Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies [emphasis mine]. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggles, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason, loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called “love”. Love is a choice-not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is a choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.

This beautiful, very human photo is by Mozinos and Flickr via Creative Commons.