Faith Venture

Love your enemies. Even the pagans love their friends.—Jesus

I’ve been on vacation in Virginia visiting sites that played roles in America’s formation. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Williamsburg where Virginia’s delegates debated siding with Massachusetts in separating from England. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Yorktown, where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington leading to the end of the “Revolutionary War.” Also bringing my wife and her sisters together again.

The trip fed many thoughts into my personal blender. Here is one:

Standing on the pier in the James River at Jamestown, I spotted a T-shirt on an upper-middle-aged man:

If this Fleig offends you I will help you pack.

My first thought—why has the flag become so politically divisive? Only conservatives are supposed to honor the flag? (I should note that our country has done many things of which I’m not proud. But still, it is my country. I hope I’ve done at least a little to support it. No one ever called me conservative.)

A second thought—Why be so pugnacious and in your face? Perhaps I have been too influenced by Jesus. Or, perhaps I’m not “feeling/judgmental” enough on the Myers-Briggs Types Indicator (I’m thinking/perceptive, which must be a minority).

I see this “in-your-face” use of language even from people who purport to be inclusive and loving (any United Methodist bishops reading this?). OK, I probably slip also at times. Feel free to call me out.

There’s a church loosely within my geographical area who had a slogan once, “Love everyone…always.” I’m not sure they did. But that sentiment obviously reflects the teaching we Jesus-followers are supposed to be practicing..always.

Or, does it, really.

Those flowers won’t grow–they are plastic.

Could this be a metaphor for how we share the love Jesus taught?

Jesus set such impossible ways of living for us. We try to live according to his teaching. How could we possibly do this?

Love our enemies?

Early venture capital fund director and current executive coach Jerry Colonna stated on a podcast interview about loving even your enemies. While neither he or the interviewer was a Donald Trump supporter, he responded to a question about loving even him.

Colonna replied that he can see the injured little boy trying to live up to an exacting father, and he could love that little boy who was injured for life.

19^th Century American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow noted, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility.”

Meditation teachers for most of my life have taught about awareness. Expanding that awareness beyond seeing just me (which many people are not even aware of themselves) to those around me and even far from me.

These practices can help us bring Jesus’s teaching into our lives in order to somehow bring some love even to our enemies.

February 14. A day set aside in many countries for couples to express their love—usually taken to mean romantic love.

It began, as many of our holidays, as an early Christian feast day for a Saint Valentine (it seems there was more than one of those in ancient times). 

A chocolatier in 1868 brilliantly conceived packaging chocolates in a red, heart-shaped box.

Love takes many forms. Most of us really don’t need a 2-lb. box of chocolate candy while we deal with our health.

But it might be a good day to acknowledge someone special.