VIEW FROM THE PEW
The priest at a recent Mass invited us to look away from him during the homily and focus on the oldtime visual aid, a stained glass window depicting the Good Samaritan parable. It’s classic religious art, vibrant colors for the well-dressed good guy and languishing robbery victim on the ground — minus any gory forensic details — and shadowy hues for the two who walked away without helping.
The Gospel of Luke tells how Jesus taught a man who had memorized the Old Testament commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” but wanted to be clear on “Who is my neighbor?”
And the Lord’s story lesson had a conclusion uncomfortable for his listeners because the guy who manned up to the challenge of giving care and time and cash to help a stranger/neighbor was not the model of a local boy superhero, but an outsider not welcomed or loved by that audience.
“When the Scriptures talk about love, it’s not about warm and fuzzy feelings,” said Father Bert Lock. “What we are called on to do in order to love and obey God and to care for each other is not easy.”
Only a few days later, there was a Good Samaritan headline in the paper in praise of people who heard a victim’s call for help, caught and detained the man who robbed her. It’s an expression that’s become part of the language; with the accent on heroic conduct rather than love.
Whenever I hear of such an incident, it makes me think of a former colleague who witnessed a terrible traffic accident and applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a bloodied victim. When the professional medical technicians took over, protected by masks and gloves, it gave my friend a jolt of terror. He anguished for months until blood tests affirmed that his spontaneous instinct to be a Good Samaritan had not led to his own contamination with the deadly HIV virus. It led to some philosophizing conversation about the hazards of living out the good neighbor parable.
Does anyone else think that even talking about loving your neighbor has gotten more, well, difficult? We live in a time when insulting, deriding, hating speech is so ordinary that we don’t even flinch when we hear it on the broadcast airwaves, in the internet ether, from the next booth at the restaurant or bar.
We’re witnessing a very mixed group of people identifying as a tribe staging a love fest of togetherness on a mountain. Sadly, it is a movement to stand separate from anyone different. There’s only one viewpoint allowed at that site. The promised nonviolence would likely devolve into a brawl if we tried a verse of “This land is your land, this land is my land … this land is made for you and me.”
My tribe, the Irish, endured four centuries of carnage and despair on their island home. It was all based on the antithesis of the Good Samaritan lesson: if you’re different from me, you are the enemy. There’s a dark downside to the concept of “sinn fein” — ourselves alone — that the mountain lovers don’t understand. If only children here were taught history, real history of all the world beyond the island, they’d know there have been thousands of tribes with stories like theirs in a huge world that is full of sacred places.
But here I go off on a tangent, doing what I just complained about, hard time talking about loving people these days. We’re getting immune to watching free speech turn bellicose or crude — give us this day our daily tweet. I do flinch from hearing music lyrics that are like vocal graffiti with love equated with some bleeped words. So, you’re not surprised to hear I love the decades-old sound track of crooners that’s the background sound at the Italian restaurant.
In these days of texting shorthand, l-o-v-e uses too much space so they invented emojis which can be seen as cute or as a way to duck using your words. That reminds me of the story from an older generation friend who was thrilled that the youngsters kept telling her “lots of love” in their cute insider language. I didn’t share my knowledge by defining what “lol” means in today’s shorthand.
My family members mostly like to use their words; give us a chance and it will be lots of words. Sadly, we mostly talk long-distance and not within hugging distance. Happily, our traditional sign off is “Love you.” Okay, it’s not effusive and poetic. But it is sincere and I’ll take it every time.
And I mean it when I sign my e-mail or snail mail letters with “Love” to a cousin we seldom see, a grieving acquaintance, longtime friends who are more reserved than my chatty self. It’s pretty clear when some people don’t know what to do with that blatant sentiment since it rarely comes back.
What I don’t love is the trite, lame, gushy sentiments of so many greeting cards. Seriously, shopping at that rack is an exercise of separating out the weeds. Is there really a demand for canned sentiments for your aunt’s cousin-once-removed who is mourning the death of her cat?
Leave the words to me
For a verbal hug, you can’t beat a stick figure drawing designed especially for you by a sincere child. Alas, we’ve mostly grown out of our childhood desire to “draw you a picture.” So what I’m shopping for is a perfect cool or comic picture with a very short sentiment. Leave the words to me.
American Greeting Cards evidently believes that consumers have lost their power of speech, or do I mean thought? Much like the pads of recipes or coupons you’d find attached to the food shelves, the card rack at Safeway recently carried a pad of advice sheets for people with severe personal communication disorder (SPCD).
“Add a personal message. Helpful tips on what to write,” was the heading of the commercial cheat sheet, which has been the source of great hilarity and mockery for a couple of us folks who are never at a loss for words. Ideas are divided by categories; a tip for expressing Love is “Hope you know I appreciate you so much.”
For Birthday: “Wishing you the biggest slice of happy today.”
For Support: “Just want to remind you how much I care about you.”
For Encouragement: “I know you are stronger than anything.”
For Congratulations: “Amazing things happen to amazing people. Congrats!”
People actually got paid to compose this capsule of communications advice: “Someone you know could use a smile. Let someone know their kindness mattered with words of gratitude. Be the support someone needs and tell them you’re here for them. Offer words of encouragement to give someone a mental boost. When someone you care about wins, you win, too.”
And last but not least: “Tell your sweetie ‘I love you’ (no one can hear it enough).”
Oh my, we are in a sorry state if we need to be told what lines to recite. But when you look around in any crowd, maybe there is evidence that we do. People occupy space together, out to dinner, side-by-side in theater seats or ballgame bleachers, in line at the ticket booth or food counter — each on an electronic device, not speaking to each other.
There’s a widespread need of a teleprompter when it comes to one particular kind of loving speech. To say thank you is an expression of love. It’s a translation of “Wow, I realize that you respect, help or love me by doing that, giving that, and here’s love right back at you.”
A gracious woman I know, with manners from another time, will call the very next day after receiving a gift or a shared meal to say thank you. She’s chronically sad and upset as her family members fail to follow her lead. Weeks, months pass with not a word to acknowledge her generosity.
I wonder, in my case as well, whether people whose brains flicker in the quick text pattern of speech don’t just dread the prospect of a long conversation, too many questions and too much information from the oldtimer. Oh, bother.
That brings me to repeat my old refrain: listening is love in one of its purest forms. Just let it roll, even if you’ve heard it all before and often. Someone needs to know you care enough to hear what’s on their mind. Laughing at tall tales is brilliant, questions are great and debate can be stimulating; argument, scolding and corrections, not so much. Oh, oh, am I sounding like the card seller?
I want to be a Good Samaritan, truly I do. Father Bert was right, loving your neighbor is not easy. I’m listening to the voices on the mountain, and I’m thanking that tribe for creating the welcoming and embracing culture in which generations of “others” like me have thrived. Please pause to hear us, too. We are your neighbors. It’s what we do for each other each day in our own time that makes our space sacred.
Seeking a poetic finale about love, I quickly rejected that soundtrack of Italian crooners. And I know I dare not assume to use a song about aloha. So I decided to turn to St. Paul, a wandering outsider all his missionary life. His text about love in a letter to the Colossians has been inspiring to many other tribes of people for centuries. And it’s also an uncomfortable examination of conscience in our present day:
“If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
“And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
“If I give away everything that I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous. (Love) is not pompous, it is not inflated. It is not rude, it does not seek its own interests; it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.
“It does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
“Love never fails.”
