Rent

Today I watched the movie "Rent". I saw the stage play about five years ago in San Francisco, and I remember being impacted by it. But as I rented the movie, I could not remember exactly why. This time something was different. I could see what the play was about. Love.

"You'll never share real love until you love yourself. I should know." (Roger, from Rent)

This hit me. The movie made me realize how much I have missed out on real love in my life. Don't get me wrong. I have been loved by many. But I have not loved the way my heart knows I can. And more importantly, I didn't love myself. This is a profound awakening for me about how much I missed out on loving people. It is in this simple act that I am made complete. It is the purpose for which I was born. It is the marrow of my bone, and the beat of my heart.

I know why I didn't love. Because I didn't love myself. I was wounded. I suffered the crushing effects of divorce in my family and I went inward, lost in my childhood interpretations of my own value. I had a father who was wounded as well. I never doubted his love but he didn't know how to show me what it meant to be whole. He knew how to play cards with me. Gin was our favorite. I don't blame him.

I didn't know how to love myself. I didn't know how to accept who I was and be okay with my flaws, to laugh at their silliness and enjoy life. Because of this, I didn't know how to love others. That is until love broke into my heart.

Learning to love begins with love in our own heart. It begins by finding our own dignity and value. It begins by recognizing who we are as children of God and embracing the deep, deep significance of this once thing. We are designed to love...but we have to be loved first.

Learning to love is a rich experience. I cry more now as I see and recognize the beauty around me. I used to not cry. Not because I didn't want to but because I believe my heart was closed to seeing the beauty within everyone around me.

My favorite scene is the Aids group where they sing, Will I. It is a profound recognition of the moment when they are aware of their brokeness and their need for each other. In this moment, they find their own dignity and hold tight to the moment when they need it most.

I love Rent. It's a beautiful story about loving each other, holding onto the love and not letting it go. Make sure you watch it.

The Economics of Love

I just had a really great conversation with a guy who is struggling to figure out what it means to love his neighbor. He's picked a family in his neighborhood and is looking for ways to just love them. His first experience came last week when the mother got sick and his wife brought them chicken soup. A simple act.

The following week she heard the doorbell ring and it was the neighbor's wife with a bottle of wine in her hand. The simple act of love had touched them in a really great way, but it had also created a subtle expectation of obligation. The wine released them from that obligation. Not wanting to be rude, my friend's wife accepted the bottle, even though it wasn't why she did it.

Which brings me to my point. In every act of love their is this intrinsic possibility of it being an economic exchange. We give and then someone gives back. It's a nice process, and in some ways contributes to community but can quickly become political. When it does, it leads to a subtle questioning of expectation. The next time she does something, is a bottle of wine expected? This is the quandary.

I cannot tell you how many times someone had said, "Let me get this one, you got the last one." People don't like obligation, and love creates an obligation of sorts. And we don't like obligation.

Jesus posed a very different way. He essentially said, "give without them knowing it." I am just now beginning to understand why. When we give without someone knowing it, we remove the economic exchange. We reduce it to a blessing from above.

I recently watched a friend process a gift that was given to him blindly. In some respects, he couldn't handle it. He spent twenty minutes trying to figure out who did it, and why they would do that. He coudln't handle the obligation and wanted to get rid of it. He realized that his obligation was now to God, and this created a deeper obligation. In the end, he couldn't help but realize it was love. He knew in his heart that those who love give without an expectation of return. He was grateful, but it really caught his attention.

The best part about this is that when we do give blindly, God promises to reward us. I used to think that God would save the reward for when we get to heaven, which kind of created this bank of extention forty or fifty years out. It seemed to steal the juice out of it. I liked the idea of God rewarding me but why wait so long. Now I'm not so sure that's the way it happens. I now believe, through several experiences, that God gives to us in the moment. The primary gift is joy in recognizing what we are created to do in this life, love.

I like that recognition. I like seeing joy in my life. I feel in those moments, the real connection to what I am here for. As God said in Genesis after reflecting, "It is so very good."

Sunflowers

I'm reading The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal. It is a fascinating discussion about the concept of forgiveness, written by Wiesenthal some fifteen years after the holocaust. I am truly amazed by this book for its depth of conversation about such an important topic. I read it in several sittings because it is so deep.

The story recounts Wiesenthal's experience with a Nazi soldier who asks for forgiveness for a murder of another person. Wiesenthal remained silent and the officer died the next day. But what was interesting is that Wiesenthal was not able to let it go. The question haunted him, and thus lead to the book. About forty philosophers, poets, rabbis and scholars contemplate his question. Different faiths are present in this conversation, Judaism, Christian, Buddhist, and Atheist.

As a Christian I wrestle with this question deeply. My wounds sometimes resound in my life in a way that shouts the incompleteness of my soul. I wish to be rid of these infirmities. They seem to be a weight that my heart cannot let go of. But when I do let go, the joy in my heart affirms to me that forgiveness is the right path.

The book presents two obvious differences in the Jewish and Christian faiths. The Jewish scholars value justice and morality and are thus inclined not to forgive, for many different reasons. The Christians and the Buddhists recount Jesus' commandment and are inclined to forgive. What I was left with were more questions. I kept screaming to myself, "But why could Wiesenthal not find resolution?"

What I took away from this reading was an awareness and affirmation that we are designed for love. Wiesenthal never walked away complete. It seemed like a divine appointment for Wiesenthal. Is it possible that Wiesenthal was wrestling with his own heart desire for completeness, which was found in the forgiveness?

Which lead me to other questions. Isn't the greatest act of our humanity, or expression of our soul, the response of rescuing the souls of those lost and revealing to them their own humanity, their worth, and their dignity? The soldier was this emobidment. Isn't forgiveness one of the defining vehicles for this rescue, where love is at its most present? Isn't the human soul's greatest work to love, and forgiveness is that love in its strongest form.

I felt deep sorrow for those who were involved in the holocaust, Jew, Nazi, bystander. What seems apparent is the damage to every soul involved, as evidenced by all parties in the book. We were not meant for atrocities of any kind. May they all find forgiveness.

Breaking Into My Heart

There are times in my life when I have stopped the daily routine, looked backwards and taken stock of my life. I'm in one of those periods right now. I evaluating the realities in my life and I'm seeing something special. I realize that I have allowed love to break into my heart.

How do I know this? Well, I can feel it. I can feel love inside my heart for the first time in a long while. A love that is divine, telling me that I am good, that I am made for something, that I am his child. It is a love that has allowed me to really take a step outside of myself and realize that I am designed to love.

Although it may seem a simple concept, for me it has been the mysterious part of the journey. I have danced around it, taught it, wrote about it, but I've always had a thin protective coating around it so it couldn't truly get to me. I hadn't allowed God's love to fully penetrate my heart.

The most subtle but obvious change has been the ability to laugh, about just about anything. I find myself enjoying life in ways that seem only distant memories of better times. I find myself enjoying other people, where I wouldn't have before. It is as though I have seen with new eyes, and the picture is good.

Rick McKinley, a gentleman I consider a mentor, even though he doesn't know it, talks often about the Kingdom of God breaking into someone. As I embrace this happening, I realize that it is He, not me, that is doing the work. He is breaking into my heart. He is restoring my soul.

The reality is that I am a self conscious person or that I am aware of my own self. For too long this has ruled my life. I have tried too long to fit in and be the right person. This is simply the desire for love. But I have looked to long to the world to love me, when His love has been there all along.

Which leads me to the question of why I could not see it? Why was this simple fact so hidden? In hindsight, I believe once I allowed love to break into my heart, I knew I had to give up control, which is a scary place. It means that I had to grow up, and become what I am designed to be, which means responsibility and consequence. It means I have to love. And in the absence of what that looks like I stepped back from it and took a seat in the stands, comfortable to watch. Comfortable to play the game the way it is meant to be played. That was me.

I realize my picture is not a whole picture. I have been on the journey in the Kingdom of God for a while. It has been rich with experiences. But is has also been about me. What about me? This inward journey has dominated my experience, and left me missing another side of the journey, the outward one, the one that calls us to love, the one that calls us to love the poor, the widow, and the fatherless.

As I look at the deeper picture behind me, the real turning point became the death of my Mother. This woke me up in more ways than I can imagine. But it wasn't until I really looked at her life that I realized she got it. She allowed love to break into her heart, to the deep crevices within her soul, and allowed it to transform her into a person that could love, and deeply. So my mom's final gift to me was an awakening. An awareness to look outside myself and see that I needed to grow up. I needed to step into who I was and allow God's love to break into my heart. Otherwise, I would miss the real point of the journey.

I've been on the journey for so long but it has never been a complete journey. Something has always been missing. Believe it or not, I started at this place of awakening. I started with God breaking into my heart. But he had things to do within me, things to work out in me, that it was a temporal experience. I was not ready to grow up. I am just grateful that he has stayed with me long enough for me to experience it again.

So I say thank you Father. Thank you for breaking into my heart and loving me so that I may learn what it means to love.