A Letter on Love

You do not know me, yet my voice rises in your heart. I am small and insignificant, yet I have seen the most wondrous of all sights. I am a greater sinner than you, yet I am commanded to speak by the one greater than all of us.

I am commanded to speak to you of love. A love you know, yet fail to live. A love you hear, yet one you long to ignore. A love that calls you to unity with all, a thought that terrifies your sense of being.

Look around you. Love surrounds you no matter where you are: in the rose garden and the trash heap, the wedding chamber and the grave, the sword and the plowshare. All are love, as all were created through love. The grand paradox of life is that all has purpose and that all is love.

We were created to give witness to the paradox. We are living brush strokes in the greatest art canvas ever imagined. We are called to embrace our role, to celebrate the paradox, to cherish it.

Yet you run from your destiny. You hide in the worlds you create for yourselves. You demand truth along your lines, your logic. Truth does not exist for you. You exist for it. Stop your arrogance and embrace the paradox of love.

I especially call out to you supposed followers of the Christ. Our brother Jesus did not die and rise for you to sit on a throne in judgment or to make him into an idol of your own imagination. His entire being calls out to us to witness the paradox, to embrace the unity of love.

Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love. How hard is that? What are you afraid of? If he was willing to die to love you, what’s your excuse for not loving those you fail to understand, those you despise, those you hate? Hate and love, that delicious paradox again.

Our brother died and rose so that we might all be one people, one community. The words and ideas in your head cannot change the reality of your heart and soul. We are all one people, one community. You may not like that truth, but you cannot outrun it forever.

In the end, we will all die. We will all return to the artist’s palette. We will all return as one. You are no more special than your enemy in that regard. Our creator loves us all equally, saint and sinner. Our brother died and rose to welcome both to the banquet. Is this unfair? Ask the paradox.

You may not like my words, but too bad. This is why I was created, to give voice to the paradox, to trouble the comfortable, to challenge the all-knowing, to love the unlovable. How I long to return home to my father, my brother, yet I have work here first. This is our command to you: love, embrace the paradox, love.

June 9, 2006