In a corner of the plaza outside the Cathedral-Basilica St. Francis in Santa Fe, a bronze depiction of an angel stands near the entrance to the labyrinth. Messages about love are inscribed on the messenger sculpture. One has stayed with me since the first time I walked the labyrinth. “I am not asking to be loved. I want to love.” I must add to this—but I will let you love me, if you want…maybe. Frankly, I find it fairly easy to feel loving toward others in general or someone in particular, and I don’t have a problem with saying, “I love you.” It’s not so easy, though, to let myself be loved. On some level it feels good to be affirmed by someone else’s love for me. There are certainly explanations for my condition. Let’s start with a perceived need to protect myself and a strong resistance to being controlled by others. I suffer issues of distrust and a fear of being disappointed, yet I would say that I have a strong need to please others, or at least not disappoint them. I suffer some fear of real commitment and the expectations that accompany it. To this list I need to add a poorly developed ability to compromise. Maybe my self esteem is at the root of all this. The list could be longer, probably. Maybe all this just adds up to immaturity, and it’s getting a little late for me to change, although I refuse to accept that an old dog can’t learn new tricks. I give thanks for that which reminds me of love, its healing power, knowing that we can all do better in this department.
It is important that love become manifest in our humanity, that it be translated into action—Love alive, inhaling and exhaling. I don’t know who said it, but I remember that somewhere, someone said, “if you can feel, you are healed.” It might have been some dope-smoking rocker from the 70s. If a picture is worth a thousand words—in this instance an image, a sculpture—the artist/creator of the Basilica Angel surely knows something about love. I feel love emanating from this spirit, captured in bronze, now released with great joy. St. Paul, writing in the first century, didn’t do so well by a lot of us, laying the foundation for attitudes fundamentally contrary to love that remain entrenched in the twenty-first century. What better rendering exists, though, concerning the ideal and the reality of love and the weight of its obligation than what he describes in his letter to the church at Corinth?
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13 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. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 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. 12 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. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Affirming Our Love—Normangee, Texas (February 2, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis
It is important that love become manifest in our humanity, that it be translated into action—Love alive, inhaling and exhaling. I don’t know who said it, but I remember that somewhere, someone said, “if you can feel, you are healed.” It might have been some dope-smoking rocker from the 70s. If a picture is worth a thousand words—in this instance an image, a sculpture—the artist/creator of the Basilica Angel surely knows something about love. I feel love emanating from this spirit, captured in bronze, now released with great joy. St. Paul, writing in the first century, didn’t do so well by a lot of us, laying the foundation for attitudes fundamentally contrary to love that remain entrenched in the twenty-first century. What better rendering exists, though, concerning the ideal and the reality of love and the weight of its obligation than what he describes in his letter to the church at Corinth?
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13 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. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 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. 12 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. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Affirming Our Love—Normangee, Texas (February 2, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis
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