Nothing to Do but Love
Dear Friends,
As we arrive at Palm Sunday and Holy Week, I have been reflecting on what it means to be a member of a faith tradition that follows a teacher who literally laid down his life in the name of justice and peace for all people. I’m not big on sacrificial theories of atonement that regard Jesus’ death on the cross as some cosmic transaction that wiped away our sins, but I do buy into the concept that through Jesus, God entered our human lives to show us just how far love is willing to go to make things right.
This has also been the week that our Justice Ministry team assembled with 22 congregations in Richmond before members of city council to present solutions to critical issues of affordable housing, gun violence, and the effects of climate change on our most vulnerable neighbors. There were over 2,000 in attendance, in person and online, and it was a powerful, but at times tense and uncomfortable experience, to watch those who were presenting our proposals face and confront resistance. I kept trying to remind myself that this is what love looks like when it has nothing, and everything, to lose.
This past week, two meditations written by social justice activist Dorothy Day in the mid-1940s landed in my inbox. They sounded as fresh to me as if they were written yesterday—the timing could not have been better. So, I will leave them with you in hopes that they will offer sustenance for this last leg of our Lenten journey, as we follow Jesus’ footsteps on the holy and hard way of love.
“Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, ‘What else is the world interested in?’ What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, April 1948
“What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do… We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We can give away an onion. We repeat, there is nothing that we can do but love, and dear God — please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, June 1946
In the way of Christ,
Amelie+
