Igantieff distinguishes between basic needs of human beings and the needs that, if respected, allow people not only to survive but to blossom and become fulfilled. Our basic needs are food, lodging, education, and medical help; our other needs are to be loved, appreciated, respected, and seen as valuable. Ignatieff argues that ensuring the basic needs of people is an act of justice that can be regulated by law, but helping a person to be fulfilled through love can never be regulated or imposed by law; you cannot oblige someone to love another because love is something that flows from our freedom. A child needs the fulfillment of basic needs but also fulfillment of the fundamental need for love. There can be no real peace if we simply remain respectful of law. Love calls forth what is deepest in each person, and if there is no real love, then there is no real peace, and justice is not respected.

The self is not merely a solitary rational being but an embodied relational task, a perpetual project to be achieved lovingly with others, within creation, and in the presence of God.

Migliore says “To wish the world were immune from every form of struggle and every form of suffering would be to wish not to have been created at all.”

I like the idea in the first comment of self being an embodied relational task, it speaks of shared process and progress. Though through experience this is never easy, the overall picture of our humanity while on the earth is the response-ability of existence within the fragility of relational experiment. The fragility comes from our internal difference found within and between us, and the constant navigation and grace difference calls for. The relational experiment is the working and re-working of self when lived in/out of social environments. This experiment is dependent on how safe or accepted we feel which is then dependent on whose present. This relational task is truly a conflicted matrix offering both the sounds of eden and whimpers of purgatory. I tilter in both of these worlds and find the pleasure of discovering the more of me which can never be free from the color of we (how poetic)..

The second comment is easy for me to celebrate. I like the every point of struggle (the suffering not so much) it loosens the grip of control and sets me on the course of contemplation, honesty, and prayer..

For the viewers, do you have additional thoughts?

Though we need to weep your loss, you dwell in that safe place in our hearts, where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

your love was like the dawn brightening over our lives, awakening beneath the dark a further adventure of color.

the sound of your found for us a new music that brightened everything.

whatever you enfolded in your gaze quickened in the joy of its being; you placed smiles like flowers on the alter of the heart. your mind always sparkled with wonder at things.

though your days here were brief, your spirit was alive, awake, complete.

we look toward each other no longer from the old distance of our names; now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath, as close to us as we are to ourselves.

though we cannot see you with outward eyes, we know ours souls gaze is upon your face, smiling back at us from within everything to which we bring our best refinement.

let us now look for you only in memory, where we would grow lonely without you. you should want us to find you in presence, besides us when beauty brightens, when kindness glows and music echoes eternal tones.

when orchids brighten the earth, darkest winter has turned to spring; may this dark grief flower with hope in every heart that loves you.

may you continue to inspire us: to enter each day with a generous heart. to serve the call of courage and love until we see your beautiful face again in that land where there is no more separation, where all tears will be wiped from our mind, and where we will never lose you again.

your friend greg

I get a dose of Merton every monday, thought this would be a read for those that travel this way…

Who, then, is my neighbor? To whom am I bound? Whom must I love?

These are not intelligent questions, and they do not have clear answers. On the contrary any attempt to answer them involves us in endless subtleties, and vagueness, and ultimate confusion. Love knows no classifications. The measure of love that Christ has set for us is beyond measure: we must “be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect.” But what is meant by “perfection” of the heavenly Father? It is impartiality, not in the sense of justice that measures out equally to all, knowing their merits, but in the sense of chesed that knows no classification of good and evil, just or unjust. “For He sends His rain upon the just and the unjust.”

We are bound to God in chesed. the power of His mercy has taken hold of us and will not let go of us: therefore we have become foolish. We can no longer love wisely. And because we have emptied ourselves in this folly which He has sent upon us, we can be moved by His unpredictable wisdom, so that we love whom we love and we help whom we help, not according to plans of our own but according to the measure laid down for us in His hidden will, which knows no measure. In this folly, which is the work of His Spirit, we must love especially those who are helpless and who can do nothing for themselves. We must also receive love from them, realizing our own helplessness, and our own inability to fend for ourselves. Chesed had made us as though we were outcasts and sinners. Chesed has numbered us among the aliens and strangers: chesed has not only robbed us of our reason but declassified us along with everyone else, in the sight of God. Thus we have no home, no family, no niche in society, and no recognizable function. Nor do we even appear to be especially charitable, and we cannot pride ourselves on virtue. Chesed had apparently robbed us of all that, for he who lives by the mercy of God alone shall have nothing else to live by, only that mercy. Plenitudo legis est charitas. Mercy fulfills the whole law. 

These last two nights have kept me quiet in the color of dreams. I see people in my dreams, i interact with them, i find myself hoping in these dreams, but the questions… Dreams, are they like pictures that hang on the wall to expense to buy, you leave empty handed knowing its way out of your reach? Are dreams created by thoughts  that lay in the deepest cavern accessible only in sleep? Why do dreams come in stories? Stories that can seem so out of place that your thinking about the dream throughout the day. Awakened in mid dream can leave you frantic, you lay back down wanting to reenter, sometimes the dream world seems more real than the real, or maybe you want it to be? Maybe dreams give you a glimpse of who you really wish you were, where you really wish you could be? Why do those in your dreams seem so familiar and yet so different? Are they the people who you really know but we finally see them as they  have always wanted to be? Sometimes i dream for the dreams i have… weird???

every answer to our important questions leads to a new important question. the truth can set us free, but only if we’re always in the process of discovering it. (kula) 

Today is World Water Day….Check out this short film coming from Charity Water, partners in the Activist Drink it will inspire and challenge..

http://www.charityis.org/wwd

Been away for while, so much happening in my new world wish i could throw it all out there, but….. Seems things for JustOne are picking up speed, had family come into town for the week good to see them, preparing for a location transition, meeting some new folk here people who seem eager, planning for the November Soliton event in Arizona as well as the Jesus for President tour that im helping host, working with other organizations/foundations in the HT world, trying to battle a cold, missing the gym, wondering if a good film will ever come out in the next month as im missing my Tim time, though i did just rent “Things we lost in the fire”, wow great film a must if you haven’t yet, constantly plotting ideas of mercy, learning alot about self and people, enjoying playing with my new soccer team strong competition and good players see how it goes, not riding to much still working the weather change, reading like crazy or least buying books and reading the parts i like, think about old friends often wondering when we will talk if ever, watching some crazy woman on TV singing at me, talking about crazy what the heck was Mrs Clinton thinking when she hired that woman racist (thats a way to kill your chances), have i told you that Liam is getting big and what a conversationalist, and Ashtin little social butterfly, everyday have ideas for a book but wonder if the content would be to descriptive for people and would i use fake names? Big week coming hold on greg and let the idea cap come off, just received some emails so got to go, hope you enjoy these random thoughts of what was and what will be…. Continue to love its the only way to survive…

Late last night I was letting the new film ‘Jumper’ push boredom into my human closet. Out of the blue I received a text from michele saying it was urgent I call her back. I did and come to find out that one of our dear friends lost his dad to an unexpected heart attack late last night. As i listened to michele tell me all that happened i found my search for words dissipate, and my memory began to rehearse the loss i experienced almost 3 years ago. I battled against this memory since this moment was not about me (and i hate when people make others pain about them) but about those that i love….. When michele and i ended our call my mind rushed to ‘what should we do’ ‘what can we be’ mode, wanting to imagine the best scenerio of how we can be there for them during this life altering season.

During this mind rant, i found myself rereading these words;

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home… They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their cloths and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

These words have become a staple in my life; i have learned the power of silence when we seek to console and comfort others, I have witnessed friends come together and set their course to be with those in pain, using dirt and paint these hands have verbalized lament when tragedy strikes the innocent.

I say all this because I want to believe love reshapes suffering, not that it removes the process of pain, but it creates an atmosphere where hope walks in uninvited and sits in human skin. Thoughts?

In closing, i find most sit with those who suffer and the one who has caused the pain sit alone. Maybe human love is incapable?

“A single beat from the heart of a lover is capable of driving out a hundred sorrows.” Naguib Mahfouz

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart, Gentle in word, Gracious in awareness, Courageous in thought, Generous in love.

“Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

February 15th, the morning after the universal day of love, may there be a continual striving to love and to know love. When faith doesn’t want to wake, and hope plays hide and seek, “love”….