Maybe love persists, but doesn't insist

These two insights on love have been bouncing around in my head for the last month or so. There is something true and tragic about them. This first clip is from Brian McLaren’s latest book, Life After Doom.

I know that there is love in Gaza. And if there is love in Gaza, then there is love everywhere.

This next clip is from James Baldwin, taken from the short film Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970). You may have come across this short clip on the socials. That’s how I found it.

“Love has never been a popular movement; and no one’s ever wanted really to be free.” How much risk are we willing to tolerate? How much emotional work are we willing to do? Love and freedom are risky and difficult. They do not offer much certainty, nor much control. And I fear that the more we emphasize certainty and control, the less love and freedom we experience, or can even allow. There is a lot of letting go in love and in freedom.

Love doesn’t always win. Love does not always defeat hate, maybe not even usually. Love is not more powerful than resentment or grievance, not always. We are experiencing an era in which all of the weaknesses of love are on full display. And yet, as McLaren notes, love is never completely absent from our lives. If we pay attention, we will see it, maybe even experience it, often.

Baldwin appeals to our common humanity: “Everyone you are looking at is also you! You could be that person. You could be that monster. You could be that cop.” Evil is, in some sense, a choice for Baldwin: “And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.” I wish I understood how such choices are made. How do we come to be a moral person? It helps to see yourself in the other, to “see no stranger,” as Valarie Kaur puts it.

McLaren’s vision of love as shared, communal requires us to appreciate simply witnessing acts of love. Kaur urges us to look at the other and think: “You are a part of me that I do not yet know.” And all of this is in service of revolutionary love. Recall Kaur’s revolutionary love compass.

All of this feels extremely naive right now. How could we make ourselves this vulnerable? If we choose to “see no stranger,” more love will exist and persist, but we might lose. Love persists, but it does not insist. And therein lies the bitter pill. We are being asked to engage in a battle that we might lose. And not because God wills it, though maybe God does. And not because there is some eternal reward for doing so; I don’t even know what that means anymore.

I do it because I’ve had moments in my life in which I felt free, and they felt better than moments of certainty. And I’ve had moments in my life in which I felt love, and they felt better than moments of control.