Skip to main content

Sincere Love

Every day I usually do quite a bit of reading.  Most of it is fairly interesting.  At one level, it could be said this is what I do for my job and that would be true.  In an odd way what I do for my job is not unlike what someone who works in a factory does for his or her job.  Reading is the routine of my job.  It is just different than what others do as routine for their jobs.

Certainly not everything I read is of equal value (to me, at least).  And not everything I read is equally engaging to me.  I do feel lucky, however, in the sense that most of what I read probably has something to do with life (at least, as I want to try to live it).  For an atheist most of what I read might be pretty silly.  I am ok with that.  I know most of what I believe theologically cannot be proved.  It really could be an illusion…and I am ok with that gamble. 

But I am convinced there is a difference between life and a meaningful life.  I want to opt for the meaningful life.  And I am sure for myself, a meaningful life cannot be merely in the moment.  Real meaning has to be meaningful today and tomorrow.  It cannot be whimsical, momentary, or even episodic.  It needs to be enduring.

Occasionally, I read something that jars me.  It makes me double back on some of the things I may have felt like I already knew.  Thomas Merton, my favorite dead monk, routinely does this to me.  Only yesterday I encountered one of those simple statements from Merton that made me go, “Whoa…I have to think about this.”

In one of my favorite books of Merton, No Man Is an Island, he says, “Our ability to be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other men is really proportionate to our capacity for sincere love.”  This is one of those sentences which has me saying, “I understand all the words, but I am not sure I understand its meaning.”  Sincere love is a weighty concept.

Actually, the idea of love is a weighty concept.  And then add the idea of “sincere” to love and my head swims.  I think the thing that unnerves me to begin with is the idea that there must also be “insincere love.”  When I know both options, sincere and insincere love, I wonder which one of the two I most often am offering?  Do I go around insincerely loving and simply calling it “love?”

What is my “capacity for sincere love?”  Whew, talk about a weighty question!  I think I have a sizeable capacity, but maybe that is because I am usually in a safe, easy environment.  When you do not have many enemies or when your enemies are fairly benign, love seems pretty easy.  That reminds me of Jesus saying something about how easy it is to love friends.

Can I increase my capacity for sincere love?  I think so and I am sure Merton thought so.  We increase our capacity by practicing loving.  I am not sure I practice enough.  It is easy to do when loving is easy.  But I think I need to practice it when it is not so easy.  In this sense, it is a bit like running or any other discipline.  You need to do it regularly; do it when you don’t want to do it; sometimes do it when it hurts.  And then slowly you begin to realize you are growing in your capacity.

You become capable of things you once could not do.  I can imagine that I and you can increase the capacity for sincere love to the extent that we actually are able to

So I think I will begin today.  I will increase my capacity for sincere love.  I am sure there will be countless opportunities.  It will be easy with my friends.  But then, there are the ding-a-lings and they won’t be so easy.  I will not be smug, however, because for someone I probably am the ding-a-ling!  And I will give them a chance to practice!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I-Thou Relationships

Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber.   I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s.   It was already a famous book by then.   I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it.   It has been a while since I looked at the book.             Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks?   I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece.   I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation.   I wish more people read him and took him seriously.           ...
13 comments
Read more

Spiritual Commitment

I was reading along in a very nice little book and hit these lines about commitment.   The author, Mitch Albom, uses the voice of one of the main characters of his nonfiction book about faith to reflect on commitment.   The voice belongs to Albom’s old rabbi of the Jewish synagogue where he went until his college days.   The old rabbi, Albert Lewis, says “the word ‘commitment’ has lost its meaning.”    The rabbi continues in a way that surely would have many people saying, “Amen!”   About commitment he says, “I’m old enough when it used to be a positive.   A committed person was someone to be admired.   He was loyal and steady.   Now a commitment is something you avoid.   You don’t want to tie yourself down.”   I also think I am old enough to know that commitment was usually a positive word.   I can think of a range of situations in which commitment would have been seen to be positive.   For example, growing up was f...
20 comments
Read more

Inward Journey and Outward Pilgrimage

There are so many different ways to think about the spiritual life.   And of course, in our country there are so many different variations of religious experiences.   There are liberals and conservatives.   There are fundamentalists and Pentecostals.   Besides the dizzying variety of Christian traditions, there are many different non-Christian traditions.   There are the major traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on.   There are the slightly more obscure traditions, such as Sikhism, Jainism, etc.   And then there are more fringe groups and, even, pseudo-religions.   There are defining doctrines and religious practices.   Some of these are specific to a particular tradition or a few traditions, such as the koan , which is used in Zen Buddhism for example.   Other defining doctrines or practices are common across the religious board.   Something like meditation would be a good example.   Christians meditate;...
10 comments
Read more