Love

Paul says it best:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

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. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Currently, the United States is having a discussion about Love and Marriage. It's wrangling about families, and laws, and benefits. However, what does not seem to be in doubt is the love the couples in question, whether heterosexual or homosexual, have for each other. It's simply the recognition our society is willing give to the forms of love that are slowly gaining acceptance that is under discussion.

This is a difficult problem only because we make it so. We must remember that we see as in a mirror, and dimly. The Love the Divine gives us makes no distinction between gay, straight, man, woman, or any other quality you care to name. Someday, we will be there as well, when the complete comes, and the partial comes to and end.

We think like children: we see the distinctions, and wrangle over what those distinctions mean, even as we say there is no separation between these things. We know only in part, for all our talk of gnosis, we have only glimpsed that fullness of knowledge. We do not abide in that fullness, we abide in Faith that the fullness we seek exists, Hope that it will come to us, and Love of all in an effort to attain and manifest that fullness.

We cannot manifest the fullness if we insist that this person is unworthy, or that person is different. We cannot manifest fullness while maintaining separation. We must surrender, at some point, to the Love of the Divine, and show it that we are not afraid, that we will bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.

Such a love we will see soon, such a love will we partake in soon, such a separation we will enact. We will reject Love, we will nail it to a cross.

Two more days.