Today’s Life Line is:
Christian spirituality involves the conscious, intentional, immediate, and ongoing choice to incarnate love in the face of our own contingency and certain, imminent death. In other words, in the full awareness of the fragility and fleetingness of life, the inevitability of suffering, the randomness and unfairness of the drawn straw, the irascible presence of injustice, the imperfection of human beings, and our mortality, not to mention the ever-present option to choose exclusively for one’s self-interest, indulgence, and aggrandizement, we nonetheless choose to love. Just as in the full awareness of the elegance and enchantment of creation, the experience of grace and joy and flourishing, the sense of divine satisfaction with justice, the incomprehensible surprise and beauty of our being, we choose to love: as wonder, celebration, praise, alignment with God, compassionate action, justice work, gratefulness, and awe. We choose daily to sow seeds of love in the world, to incarnate love in creative and tangible ways.
St. John of the Cross wrote, “Love is the measure.” He also said, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”
Friends, what say we get to puttin’? What say we do our little, indispensable, vital part in making Dorothy Day’s dream of a “revolution of love?” come true in this place and in this time? It can be our daily practice of non-violent resistance against the human devolution caused by cynicism, indifference, demeaning language, arrogance, demagoguery, mean and hateful behavior, and violent actions that have become tacitly accepted and normalized even by those who self-identify as Christians.
Make no mistake, the devolution is real. It is also lethal. It kills the soul. It dehumanizes and destroys people, and desecrates the earth. But the revolution of love one moment, thought, word, gesture, deed, and day at a time is a deeper and more enduring way, truth, and life. It’s as simple, as inconvenient, as difficult, as contagious, as needed, as uplifting, as moving, as Christ-like, as transformative, and life-giving as that.
~ Dan Miller