LOVE BINDS US

Pretty much everybody loves somebody and something, usually lots of of somebodies and somethings. There's the lovely wife or the handsome Dan husband, the wee ones, Mom and Dad of course, our siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, and cousins and aunts and uncles, our revered grannies and gramps if we're lucky enough to still have them around, and dear friends too. Then there are the things we love, even though some people say you can't love things, only people. Well, pish and tosh on that notion, because it's just not true. Everyone loves music (even opera in some extreme cases! go figure...), and lots of us love baseball, or cars, or gardening, chocolate (true love!), sailing, snow, stamp collecting, Scrabble, new clothes, books, movies, beaches, sunsets, shoes, Sponge Bob, painting, cooking, skipping rope, you name it. And pretty much everybody loves their country and their hometown, even some places the rest of us are less than enthusiastic about.

We're lousy with love, we humans. Gets us in trouble some times, and losing it can be a real pain in the heart. It's something we feel before we know what feelings are, before we can speak or walk, or read or dance the tango. Sometimes we love someone so much that it hurts, and our hearts ache with fullness. Sometimes we take our love for granted and let is go unspoken, but it is a powerful force just the same, and its removal or just the threat of its removal can bed devastating. It is the tie that binds us one and al, the human glue that keeps us exasperating nut jobs from bopping one another over the head on a regular basis.

We can be annoying, every last one of us. After all, one of the biggest definitions of human is "imperfect," as in I'm only human. Well, there's nothing "only" about being a human being, as complex, mysterious and unpredictable a creature as ever walked God's green. We even surprise ourselves often enough to realize that there's more than meets the eye to people. There's all that damned love, for one thing, seething and boiling inside even the mildest among us. It motivates our every action and informs every life. Our best memories are tangled images of love and the joy of sharing it with our special people at very special times.

When you examines these memories, as often than not the times and events weren't so special at all, just regular times doing regular stuff. What made these memories stand out was the love for the special people, a love that is still as fresh and tangible as the day the memory was created and deposited in our personal data banks forever. Who can forget the love of a child for his or her best best friend? Or what we call our "first love," the romantic kind? The truth is that our hearts had been rehearsing for that day since we were born, pouring love all over all kinds of people and things and activities, and getting showered with love in return.

There was once a guy who pointed this out to us, a carpenter's boy from an obscure corner of the Roman Empire and a Jew by birth. He made the outlandish claims that love was the greatest of God's commandments, and that love would solve mankind's problems. He was a real stickler for love, and travelled around his home country teaching people all kinds of lessons about love and how it was the universal thread that binds all of humanity together. The times in which he lived were pretty violent times, just like now and any other time you care to mention. Only thing was, this guy turned his back on all that sword play and war making, telling his followers it wasn't worth a wooden nickel. He was merely pointing out the obvious, as any of his followers who looked into their own hearts and found them swelling with love can attest.

Jesus was the guy's name, and his teachings and his ministry annoyed the crap out of a lot of the powers-that-be in his country, a hodge-podge of military, royalty, occupying powers and religious authorities that had forgotten about the love in their hearts and were in a pretty rotten state of mind. He was warned again and again to cut it out already and stop getting on the nerves of the powerful but he didn't pay them any mind, even dismissed them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. That's a dangerous thing to do with petty officialdom, those unfortunate creatures who channel their love into self-worshp and glorification, with the predictable results of becoming ridiculous human beings. Well, ridiculous people can be very dangerous when threatened and they wound up killing this young Jesus guy for his troubles.

Turns out the joke was on them and his message of love outlived them all. His followers now number in the billions and their love is beyond our puny capacity to measure it. The sad thing, though, is that we confine our love, and forget that Jesus taught us to love all people, love them with the same fierce passion with which we love our families and friends. Hardest of all, he told us we should love our enemies! That's a real challenge, to be sure, but if you examine that bold statement closely, it contains the answer to the unending violent times and the bloody carnage that passes for history around here, and around every other place too. If you really get to know your neighbor, for that is who our enemies are on this small world, odds are you'll find a person whose heart is as filled with love as your own.

Every human everywhere shares the universal trait of learning to love before they can walk. We all want to be safe and warm and keep our families the same way. We all would rather love than hate, rather love that fight, rather love than stain our spirits with small and petty complaints. We all would rather live than die, since life is one of the things we love most of all. When one of us loses their life, as one day we all do, those of us who loved them seek one another out and love each other more fiercely than ever, and share memories of love of the person we lost as we say goodbye.

It is an overwhelmingly powerful and universal experience, and always it is love that heals the loss of a loved one. We remember the good, the beautiful, the courageous and most of all, the love. Take away all our toys, all our riches and all our possessions, and still people are blessed and rich. We have love. Turn away from love at your mortal peril, embrace it for your salvation. Love all of God's children for the beautiful beings that they are. Love is the tie that binds, that heals, that bestows beauty and worth and life itself. And as a humble carpenter's son once pointed out 2,000 years ago, love will one day bring us peace. When we are ready, when our eyes can finally see what our hearts already know for certain, and when we allow ourselves to be all that we were designed to be, love will bind us all. It's the only game in town.