limp or love

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35

(placard that hangs by my backdoor / Julie Cook / 2016)

Anyone old enough to remember the 1960’s knows that that decade was known as the decade of peace and love…
It was also the decade of war and unrest.
With much of that unrest running rampant on American streets.

The decade began with a dashing new young President who was tragically cut down prematurely in the prime of his life.
Death loomed heavily over the United States as the war in Vietnam continued on and on….
Tensions grew exponentially on our college campuses.
Draft cards were defiantly burned, young men ran away to Canada as wooden coffins continued flying home.

The war was murky and deadly…
As a new type of warfare had been unleashed.
Guerrilla fighters lurked in the jungle and rice patties as Napalm was unleashed on entire villages.
The end goal had gotten lost in Washington and no one really understood why we lingered…
If we couldn’t finish successfully what had been started, then why remain buried in all the carnage.
The country definitely exclaimed that enough was enough.

As the decade wore on, other hopeful voices were silenced…
Bobby Kennedy then Martin Luther King were each snatched away just before the turning point.

Even the Catholic Church was not exempt from the decade of turmoil as the groundwork for the first Vatican Council held in over 100 years, better known as Vatican II, saw sweeping doctrinal change–some welcomed the change, some continue to curse the change to this day.

As the bras burned and the peace signs were hoisted high, as the hair grew longer and the season of love saw a brand new dawn…some wondered if life had simply spun out of control…

In 1966 a parish priest at an inner city church, on Chicago’s south side, needed a song for his youth choir to perform.
However nothing seemed fitting for the kids nor for the times in which they were barley holding on…
Peter Scholtes penned a quick tune he felt appropriate…
It was based on verse 35 of John 13…

Almost two thousand years prior, on a warm Jerusalem evening, the night of the Passover, what we now refer to as the Last Supper, was being observed by a rag tag group of friends.
Jesus had just admonished Judas that if he was to go, to do what he had destined himself to do, he must go quickly in order to get on with it…
The air was heavy as an odd tremendous sense of sorrow hung over those gathered.
This was no ordinary Passover and the disciples all sensed it.

Jesus tells those gathered that in just a short while, he will no longer be with them.
This sends a frantic pulse racing through the group.
A heightened sense of panic now replaces the somber melancholy.

Jesus quickly tamps down the nervous chatter…his words send a powerful calm throughout the room.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Jesus knew what was soon to take place, the disciples had not a clue.
Yet He wanted to leave them with a powerful and clear path once he was gone.

The lasting legacy that Jesus offered that solitary night so long ago for not only those remaining 11 friends gathered around that table is also a continuum offered to us to this day…a continuum of love

That Love, which was culminated on a lone wooden cross, is more than an offering or gift, it is a charge.
A charge that came at a tremendous cost.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us of what that cost actually means…“It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

Many believe, and wrongly so, that the love Christians were charged with so long ago is a passively weak sort of oozing emotional goo. A surface sort of feeling that cannot weather the impending storms of life.
And for those who do not truly grasp the depth, the demands and the drive of this said Love…
they are left lost in its wake…for they underestimated its cost and expectation…

Yet in actuality this Love is a hard love and a tough love.

It is a love that demands not a piece or part, but rather the whole…the entirety of self

It is a love that casts out both doubt and fear.

It stands in the wake of pain and suffering as it is the only thing remaining once the dust of the
battlefield of this life has settled.

The love offered by Jesus that night to his disciples, which is the same love offered to both you and me on Calvary, cost not only Jesus his life but it cost God the life of his only son….it was a life sold for 30 pieces of silver… for both you and I…
And it was paid for, for our salvation, which in turn means that we were bought and paid with Love…

So will you be recognized for the Love of Christ which radiates as your guiding force through the minefield of this most turbulent early portion of the 21st millennium or will you be recognized by your limp…

For they will know us by our Love for we are One in the Spirit….

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 14:16-18

the neighborhood kids

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
Martin Buber

I grew up in Atlanta during the 1960’s. For all the world’s angst during the turbulent 60s’— between Vietnam protests, the birth of the hippies/flower children and the “Peace Movement” to woman’s lib, Woodstock, Hell’s Angels…my world was pretty oblivious. I lived on a street that was/is known as a “court”—a road that is a dead-end but actually has a rounded ending allowing cars to flow back out down the street as they came in. Ten houses were/are still on the street. Five of the houses had kids with another having visiting grandkids.

It was a wonderful place for kids—a relative safe enclave as the cars coming and going were, for the majority, residents of the street all knowing to watch out, as we were constantly taking over the street. We used the court end as a baseball field, as the location for the can in our night games of “kick the can”, as a roller skating rink, our bike raceway and as a basketball court as one neighbor erected a basketball backboard and net on the telephone pole.

Every house’s back yard was fair game for us. One yard was particularly ideal for a neighborhood game of football. This neighbor had a nice boat that he kept flipped over on two sawhorses that provided a wonderful place to “play” pirates….no one thought of the danger of the boat falling on any of us. At any moment a neighbor could peek out a window catching a glimpse of a young person running past, moving towards the next adventure—as surrounding the houses on one side of the strew were “the woods” and on the other side of the street, back behind those houses, was “the creek”.

With adventure and imagined danger lurking at every turn we were in childhood heaven in the middle of the big city. There were pine straw forts in the woods, with sand bar islands claimed as territory up and down the creek. I suppose back then parents didn’t worry perhaps as they do today. We could spend all day in woods and creek, not returning home until sundown all without any parents batting an eye.

My mother had an antique cow bell she’d ring, stepping out the back door swinging that thing back and forth—I was so embarrassed as it sounded as if the whole world knew the Nichols kids had to hurry home. But that only meant running in to grab a jar, complete with lid, hurrying back out to catch the summer’s arriving lightning bugs or fire flies.

It was an ideal time and way of growing up—or so it seemed to us—the violence of today just didn’t seem to exist, and if it did, it was far removed from our world. There were not the sexual predators we hear of almost daily today, or if there were, we didn’t know about it. We longed for the ice cream man to come to our street, not ever thinking he could be someone who would do harm to kids.
We walked the mile to and from elementary school, our parents never imaging that doing so could put any of us at risk for “disappearing”—thank God—thank God for that innocence of time.

Our lemonade stand was actually an ice tea stand—we made all of $2—and were proud of it. With only 10 houses our “business” was a bit limited and not “booming”. The greatest tragedy was when my cat wandered down to the busier street that our street emptied into. My dad constantly warned us to never ever go down to that street as cars just zipped up and down. Our bus stop was located on the corner and that was as far as we could go unescorted.

My Charcoal unfortunately wandered one night too far. We found him, as we all made our way to the bus stop one morning—everyone started yelling about the run-over dead cat, of which I explained was simply sleeping. I was in the first grade, what did I know?! On further inspection we all realized it was my cat. I remember running all the way back to the house, crying hysterically. My dad had to go get him in order to bury him in our backyard—-how many pets are still there in that yard…..

My Dad and step-mom still live in the house. Things have changed very little yet there are subtleties—the kids are all grown and gone, and even their children, the grandchildren are now grown. The street has only 3 of the original owners remaining and is mostly silent now. The urban sprawl of the city has grown and is encroaching more and more on the “neighborhood” but the street is still dreamlike and peaceful. I wouldn’t let any child walk to school today, or play in the polluted creek, or in what remains of any woods that has yet been developed. Dad doesn’t know the names of the neighbors….and I never see anyone out when I go to visit but maybe a passing jogger….sadly the innocence seems to have faded away….pity

Today I want to share with you my neighborhood’s kids. Well, I can’t say that I really live in a neighborhood as I am surrounded by woods and pastures but I still have kids that I can catch a glimpse of running past my window. These kids may not be as friendly as we were, but they still enjoy running around the yard, chasing and being chased….investigating this and that and simply having fun just “hanging out”…

I’ve had the joy and pleasure of watching these two grow up since this past winter….hopefully, they will be back with their children soon……as I hope my yard can maintain an innocence for them……