Happy Valentine's Day

From (of course) I Corinthians, chapter 13:

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.

And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.

Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.

It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth


It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.

*****

And you know, that kind of sums up my dissatisfaction with what Valentine's Day has become.

Nowhere in there does it say "Love buys diamonds for its beloved."
Nowhere does it say "If you spend enough money, you get a 'free pass.'"

No. It makes the much harder requirement. (And before I go any further: the "love" being referenced is, of course, not merely romantic love, but rather the love we are all expected to have for our fellow humans. Even the ones who make themselves unlovable. Perhaps, especially, the ones who make themselves unlovable).

Love wants what's best for the other person. It's not kind of holding back, kind of going, "I'll do this but there better be something in it for me." It doesn't keep score - "Well, he screwed up in this way and that way and that way last week, so I'll just remember those and hold them over his head when he wants something from me."

It doesn't boast. It doesn't force itself on others.

It's really hard, I openly admit it, for me to have that kind of love for my fellow human. (I must confess: the other day, when I wrote about going to the wal-mart at 4 pm - when I encountered the first Special Snowflake, I was sitting in my car, shouting "*sshole! *sshole! *sshole!" at him. No, he couldn't hear me, of course. But I was still agitated and angry and I still could not love him at that moment).

I don't think any of us can have that kind of constant and abiding love for our fellow human for all the time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work on it. But it's a hard task.

Sometimes I wonder - thinking, as I do, of the Fall as more allegorical explanation for characteristics ingrained in human nature than as a literal account of "this is how it really happened," if the real Fall of humanity happened when the first man committed the first malicious act against another man. I'm not talking about simple predation or competition like animals do; I'm talking about the first premeditated act, done not out of a need to survive or to get food or any of those basic survival needs, but the first act done to wound the feelings of another - and done specifically for that purpose. I wonder if that's when our eyes were maybe "opened," and we became like God in the sense that we now had the power to either comfort or wound. (But we have not God's wisdom to make us want to AVOID wounding)

I think a lot of - if not all - of the things that we think of as sin (at least, those of us who still use the concept of sin) can be traced back to that fundamental selfishness, that desire to have your own, and the heck with the other. Traced back to not loving one's fellow man.

I don't know. I do know it makes me sad to think of some people using Valentine's Day as a way to try to buy the love or forgiveness of the other person in their life. If you really do have love for that other person, if you are kind and loving most of the time (no one is all of the time), a card or some kind of silly inexpensive gift should suffice. Because you're showing the person love - you're doing love - the whole year through.

It also makes me sad to think that Valentine's Day, at least when you're an adult, is aimed at one type and one type only of love - romantic love. For those of us who don't have it in our lives (or don't have it at this moment), it makes the day a tiny bit bitter. It makes it just a little harder to think of the love we DO have - be it love of parents, or of God, or of good friends, or of children - and be grateful for it. Because some folks, it seems, see those other kinds of love (which frankly, in my life, have been far more faithful and far more abiding than romantic love) as somewhat of a "second prize." You know, it's the single "losers" who talk about how much they love their friends. Or how they're happy they have a close relationship with family.

And that just is sad. Because I've found that when the guy left me, when he started dating another woman without telling me when we had earlier made a sort of "exclusivity" pact, when he claimed that "following his bliss" meant his going somewhere he knew I couldn't follow - the ones who were there to console me, to tell me, "He doesn't deserve you, and he proved it by doing THAT," who said, "It doesn't matter anyway; you're a strong person and you don't need a man to depend on" or "You do not deserve to be treated like that" were my friends and my family.

It's too bad, really, we don't have a day - or that we don't take back Valentine's Day - to celebrate THAT kind of love. (Well, OK, there's Mother's Day and Father's Day but that doesn't cover a lot of the people who love me)

I may have fewer than 10 people in my life I can count on that way - people that, no matter what happened, no matter what awful thing I had to phone them up about, would still listen to me, still commiserate with me, still LOVE me (even if they were telling me they were going to "kick my ass" for me being stupid and getting into whatever problematic situation it was). They're the ones I'd want to sent a Valentine to, to thank them for their loyalty and their love.