Mind the Gap

Es tan corto el amor,
y tan largo el olvido
--Pablo Neruda

Where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also
--Matthew 6:21

An' sometimes I wonder,
Who you'd be today?
Today, today, today
--Who You'd be Today,
Kenny Chesney

It will teach you to love
what you're afraid of
After it takes away all that
You learn to love
--Hope, Jack Johnson
_______________

Sunday Homily: What do you value most?

Most people are programmed to say the typical; family and kids usually head the list. While that may be true, it is not necessarily so. My mother told me, you didn't choose us, so you don't have to love us; you choose your friends.

The Ten Commandments direct us only to respect our parents. The imperative to love is reserved for very few: your enemy, the stranger, your God, your neighbor. But the latter is leavened into a a teaching point -- love him only as you love yourself. There is no commandment to love one's spouse or even one's children.

What do you actually value the most in your life? It needn't be a tangible, even, but just consider the question.

A simple documentary, The Way We Get By, put me in mind of today's question. It is a small story of senior citizen "troop greeters" who gather daily at the Bangor Airport to thank American soldiers departing and returning from Iraq,

Describing the greeters, New York Times reviewer Catsoulis invokes Milton's "They also serve who also stand and wait." There is something profoundly poignant about this story. People who seek no fame or glory, but seek meaning in this apparent act of altruism.

This is not a film about the work of war, but those who send off and greet the soldiers. Though their project is decent, it is also tragic, as their raison d'etre is based around the project of killing. And their project of connection will end with the wars.

The film reminds us that among the finest stories we can find to tell about war are the friendships formed. The shared humanity which persists despite the odds. Interpreters who are being shepherded to the states, locals who harbor the wounded; from past wars, friendships which spans the decades.

We read these stories as a parched man reaching for water. It is almost as though we need to know that friendship traverses even the most disparate of people, and the most heinous and cruel circumstances. The impulse to connect is endemic to life itself, and once formed, that connection can perdure.

One might call it commensalism or a biological necessity, but a true friend is like the Proverbs woman, and has a value above rubies (A capable, intelligent and virtuous woman, who is he who can find her? She is far more precious than jewels and her value is far above rubies or pearls, Proverbs 31:10.) Life can go on in a psychological vacuum, and often does even in some ostensible partnerships, sadly. But what we treasure are the meeting points where another receives us for who we are.

We may find value in work or in solitude, but joy is to be found in true fraternization. Why is the small pub built around a hearth such a safety zone? Because it is a gathering of kindred spirits, sharing thoughts which will be heard, even if not added to. It a zone in which one can be oneself.

One might ask, wherefore our connection -- the blog. Sure, it is a free-fire zone, a place to speak one's truth. But its highest value is when it serves as a spot for dialog and discovery. Like in the t.v. series "Cheers," a place where everybody knows your name, even if it is a nom de guerre. (No name defines us, anyway. A rose by any other name. . .)

Many friends I have not seen in years, but they are as dear to me yet as the last day I spent with them, and always will be. They have my best interests at heart, and their care accrues them no gain, other than the thing itself. There is no tangible proof of their value -- no gift or object which need introduce them. Simply, they are my friends, and I will never own anything which will match their worth.

Stories of improbable friendships bridging seemingly unspannable gaps are the most affecting. The elderly greeters at the Bangor airport exemplify a sort altruistic love, all the more precious for its ephemerality. Maybe it is not altruism, and they are gaining in proportion to their gift.

What matters? Once you get that right, everything else is fairly easy.

--The Potato Eaters, Vincent van Gogh