Love Divided…

A hearts Cry –

“We live until we die” …this whole prospect regarding life and death is interesting… One minute we’re here and then, in the next moment, the heart stops beating; the electricity gets disconnected, and everything goes black. 

Once it goes to black, the chance of it coming back is reduced, but not impossible. That is where it becomes complicated. In the end, this thing called death takes us all in one way or another. Some intentionally choose the time they will breathe that last, beautiful, complicated breath, and others don’t they let life take its course. Thoughts of suicide are a fight within the self, it becomes an “option” because we choose when the heart stops beating, and consequently asks the brain to stop responding to the emotion of the electromagnetic current running through us. 

The full ripple effect is unknown and likely often unknown and untold. The emotional toll on others is not easily gauged or understood. I know people who have experienced loss in this regard, and they often have a visible reaction to the conversation and yet, I don’t think it’s ever fully explored and expressed how they are truly feeling about that loss. All I know for sure is, from the expressions of others, it hurts in ways that other things don’t, both in them and in the one contemplating…

Yet, the depth of anger, anxiety, and the other 164 emotions cascading at any given moment is also often under-explored. Our culture has virtually demonized, definitely dismissed, and diverted attention from our inner world. Granted, mental health has become a “hot topic” of late, but it took a breakthrough starting with soldiers coming back from the war-torn desert battlefields of Iraq to get our attention. Prior to this revolution in health care, the prevailing winds were to blow the dust off the feelings because we were Americans, and those colors didn’t run down our cheeks. 

In the gospels, there is a simple and complicated instruction. “Love your neighbor as yourself. This is not saying as you “love yourself”, rather it’s as if we are one organism. As if you were a part of me that I cannot live without. 

What is this “Love” then? A deep guttural heart cry. A cry for Him who blew into the dirt and gave it life, a heart cry for God, for something, or someone bigger than themselves. This is not a piece advocating for any specific deity, historical figure, messiah, etc. Why not? Because of one word. Choice.  Without choice, division ensues, and love dies the horrible death of loneliness because of subjection. When “love” is demanded and forced, it is no longer love, but enslavement.

I believe we have failed to recognize the impact of how the most iconic cultural hero, Jesus, wept too. We like to theorize about why he did, rather than focusing on that he did.  He was wrought with emotion, and he expressed it. Likely in such a way, the gospel writer felt it viscerally. We would do well in allowing ourselves to experience and express our emotions so we too felt them viscerally and others knew the depth of our grief so they could help love us, and we them, back to health. To view the emotional state of others as something we can or will inevitably identify with and experience. Emotional expressions of grief and despair are not something that needs to be “gotten over”, they need a neighbor to love them through the difficult time. Allowing them to express themselves and not be made to suppress them further.

As people, there are many things we can live without, including some of our internal organs. However, we cannot live without water, a heartbeat, or each other.

In the surreal scenarios where the question is asked “What would you do if you found out you were the last person left alive on earth?” The simple answer is, that you would die, and it would be the worst kind of death, from loneliness. Deprivation of the knowing and accepting love from another.

The sad reality is, that we are “too busy” to see this requisite need for each other.  To love our neighbors as ourselves is in part to recognize this need and then to act accordingly. To listen and respond to the heart cry and desire for connection of others to us. 

If then, we extinguish our feelings, deny our desire for expression, or worse deny others their turn to express themselves, we will lose our way. Potentially driving the proverbial bus off the frontier in a spiral of despair. This often has another name, suicide. Sometimes it is a quick death, often it is a slow painful one, through drugs or alcohol. We do not choose to label those as suicides though as they were not the immediate, heart-stopping, electric shock kind. Though, maybe we should revisit that conversation. Or better yet, we should attempt real dialogue filled with love, empathy, and a desire to see ourselves in another, flourishing.  

Perhaps we should look at another side of this block called suicide. Those who are close to making that leap, those who feel they have nothing more than a paycheck to live for, and yet keep fighting the uphill battle looking for some reward, for love, no matter how tiny a morsel it ends up being. It is in this fight, I believe, that they are unconsciously loving their neighbor as themselves. They are choosing to stay alive for those they care about, perhaps it is just one person. One person whom they do not want to disappoint.

Sadly though, trouble awaits. Waiting to disrupt the intimacy of one, separating us from “true love.” Shrouding us in a veil, one that covers our eyes and blocks our ears. One that keeps us divided from true, whole, and perfect love. One that keeps us separated from each other. Yet the veil which separates us from each other separates us from ourselves as well.

How, what, then can we do? We can mourn the loss of innocence and fight the injustices that steal it. We can stop and look. Really look at the person across the world, country, state, city, room, and table, and then see them, and ourselves in one fell swoop. See them as that integral piece of ourselves that is missing. I can stop and see you and me and what makes you and I different, yet the same. We can stop. Stop looking for what makes us different, stop the us vs. them. We can learn to love our neighbors AS ourselves. We are to love each other as if one. As if I am you and you are me…

True love cannot be divided, but it can be manifested. True love can be shared, felt, and experienced, it is the glue of unity and unification. It is the force that drives us to our knees as we bow in desperation, thirsting for, and desiring this quality, action, and emotion, for this wellspring to fill our cups, and run over our lips. It is the embodiment of the word “abide”. To come together as one, to live as one… It is the universal spirit, that binds us together, it is what drives us to the point of being willing and able to fulfill a mission and give up our lives in deference to an ideal, a value, or another virtually held virtue.

Conversely, it is also that same zeal for love and its cousin acceptance that drives us apart, that drives us to the extremes of saying, I am right, and you are wrong. I will love these in my camp as myself, but I cannot see me in you…thus I will call you a terrorist…

Yet, we are them and they are us. We are all capable of doing great and dangerous things alike. Thus, we need then to do as my friend says when we part ways, “Take care of yourself out there.” 

In that small sentence, what she is saying, is, “Take care of the you I know and the one I don’t. The one I see regularly and the one I never will” … May we then choose this day to love our neighbors as ourselves…