From last week, "We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love. Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)"
There are lots of ways a conversation from love shows itself. Perhaps most obvious is what we used to call "good manners." You'd have to be living in a cave to miss how much of those practices are missing in our current public discourse.
As much as we may lament their absence there is more to our speaking the truth in love than good manners. That is to say that love is more than a style element. It is an anchor, a foundation, a strength, a source. Many conversations that are missing their manners can still be sustained to finding a point of resolution and learning for both parties when start with love.
Indeed, it is incumbent upon us to trust the source of love more than any style when the topic is hard. Violations of "manners" or social custom have long been a way for the powerful to silence the powerless. Sometimes the asking itself is the violation no matter how the question is presented. I think about that moment in the film "Oliver" when he approaches Mr. and Mrs. Bumble for "more." No one asks for more! Conversation over!
When love is the source of what we say it shapes much of how we say it. But love -- especially love in our public discourse -- has many pretenders. For instance, fear can generate passions that we confuse with love.
It takes trust to let love find its voice in us. And we have to be honest about ourselves when we are love's intended delivery system. None of us is worthy except and until love chooses us.
St. Paul was often writing to communities at odds with each other and he came to understand the value of love as more than a delivery system or style or feeling. We miss what he said in his letter to the Corinthians when we hear read at weddings. "Without love/ἀγάπην I am a noisy gong."
Paul is talking to a community at odds with itself and he is talking about talking. What he says is an excellent guide for us as fellow parishioners or for whenever we are joined to that broader civic/civil discourse that waits on us and begs for this love.
When love is the source of what we say it shapes much of how we say it. But love -- especially love in our public discourse -- has many pretenders. For instance, fear can generate passions that we confuse with love.
It takes trust to let love find its voice in us. And we have to be honest about ourselves when we are love's intended delivery system. None of us is worthy except and until love chooses us.
St. Paul was often writing to communities at odds with each other and he came to understand the value of love as more than a delivery system or style or feeling. We miss what he said in his letter to the Corinthians when we hear read at weddings. "Without love/ἀγάπην I am a noisy gong."
Paul is talking to a community at odds with itself and he is talking about talking. What he says is an excellent guide for us as fellow parishioners or for whenever we are joined to that broader civic/civil discourse that waits on us and begs for this love.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. I Corinthians 13:4-8a
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