Faith, Hope, and Love

One of my friends just emailed me to tell me that today (Sept 17th, in case I don't finish this draft in time) is a huge holiday in Bulgaria (and perhaps for Eastern Orthodoxers everywhere). It's a holiday for the Saints Faith, Hope, and Love, and for their mother St. Sophia who is like, the guardian of wisdom or something. ...This would be very interesting to look at with a mind to the gnostic portion of Christian movements back in the day. Thankyou, Ancient Christianity class.

Anyway, It seems appropriate then to quote 1 Cor 13. It's kind of nice when you're sitting around thinking, man, what IS love anyway? And 1 Cor 13 has all these 'Love is...' statements. It's good to hear and think about because really, when different people say the word 'love,' they often mean very different things.

There is what has come to be termed the 'Love Wall' here on campus. It is the a wall that serves as the end of the last bathroom stall in one of the women's restrooms. The wall is made of medium-small square tiles and people have written on the grout between tiles and on the tiles themselves. Everything is about love. Most are statements that begin with 'I love...', many are comments about love, and even some questions.

I'm going to come back to this post later. I'm really being distracted by my Geometry homework. Why not just post this and then add more later? I'd really like to be able to complete a couple of tangents within a post to make a fuller, more complete story. And, it seems best to explain as much as possible all at once so that in the future, I can make references or elaborate rather than having to continue something that I didn't tie together in the first place.

Once, I copied this section onto the wall:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

Someone wrote next to it something like,

Not so complicated, Love just is

I know I have the 'Love just is' part right, but I'll pull a Thucydides and say I don't actually remember what the first phrase was, but it was something to the effect that I had tried to write too much about what love was.

I'm gaining a fuller appreciation of the ideas that 1 Cor 13 beautifully records, incidentally:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I'm not sure how to explain this, but I guess that until recently, it hadn't occurred to me to think about what Paul was actually talking about knowing in part or knowing fully. And even when people told me interpretations, it didn't really hit home. But, consider After Apple Picking by Robert Frost:

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.

I have very similar mental images from both of these passages. I see Robert Frost looking into the pane of glass.. or ice.. in the same way that Paul looks into the poor reflection of the mirror - Seeing a vague semblence, but never fully comprehending what it means. I think that this is a natural part of trying to understand things here on earth. Real things like love, justice, peace, God, our own selves, life, death... No matter how much I think I understand one of these topics, I always discover that I wasn't quite right. There's something else that I strain my metaphorical eyes to see. I'm learning more about the world. I'm gaining more experiences through which to understand both new things and to understand more fully things I thought I knew before. I'm onto something, I know. But, I don't understand completely. But someday, someday we will understand. Clear as a clanging cymbal or a crashing gong. God is love, and I think that when I really believe this (I always think I believe this, but then again, I also think I know what it means to believe something), when we really believe this, it will all fit together.
Or maybe I'll understand when I go home
and there is nothing left to keep me from being face to face with my God.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell

Dear world, please keep searching. Faith, Hope, and Love are real, even if we don't understand what the entirety of this means.

A conversation with one of my friends:

"You know what I hate about Christianity?"
I try to figure out what he's going to say and take too long
so he told me.
I don't remember the exact words, but it was about how Christians so easily throw around those heavy words - like love. They use them so often, but nobody stops to really talk about what they mean

I thought this was funny because I'm a Christian and I'd just been typing (chat) with some other Christian friends about love.

But I think he's right. Churches find it so easy to throw those words around. They're a huge part of Christianese, but when they're so common, nobody really stops to ask, wait. what did I just SAY

Maybe they should read the Love wall. There are so many different contributors. It would be something to think about.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This has been the NIV translation of part of 1 Cor 13. I do like how the KJV translates 'agape' (love. not from the heart or the spleen, but from the will) as 'charity.'

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
There is no fear in love, but love drives out fear
God is love
love ye one another
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends
As the father sent me, so send I you
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
Love your neighbor as yourself

This is hard teaching. Who can understand it?

and this is a long post. Who can read it? ;)

Now we know in part, but then we shall know in full.
Take heart, for he has overcome the world.

Thankyou, my friends.
I do not know the name of this holiday, but
Happy Wisdom, Faith, Hope, and Love day.

I am not good at saying these things, and apparently not that much better at writing them. But, someday I will figure out how to say, "I love you" with all its significance in all its glory. I doubt it will be with words. So much of life is a kind of love charades as we find ways to act out what we cannot say.

loving is labor
labor's life
life's forever
-Biomusicology Ted Leo and the Pharmacists