Where Is Love?

It's constantly popping up, but who knows what's really going on?

It’s spring! So, once again, we have the subject of “love” popping up like a groundhog from the wet grass. Jesus leaves no doubt when he says in today’s gospel, John 15 : 9-17, “"As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love….” and then he ups the ante: “This I command you: Love one another.” So we have an actual command to love; and we want to fulfill that command with all our hearts—if we can figure out how.

Yes, we look to the life of Jesus, the Commandments, the Scriptures. But as the years go by, we see some very mixed results from our efforts to love. We think we are “in love”, but then why does it fade? We think we know how to love our spouse, our children, our friends or our siblings—but all is still not smooth. In the harsh challenges of messy relationships, in the moment by moment pressure cooker of decision-making, we end up realizing we often don’t really know what love means. Let’s just say, I’m one who has at times felt like the subject of Jon Bon Jovi’s first big hit, “You Give Love A Bad Name.”

Both before and since Jesus’ time, there is no shortage of people shouting their definitions, experiences, and opinions about exactly what love is…and they sure sound confident! but, unfortunately, they’ve solved nothing. Divorce, abuse, violence, broken hearts—still in record numbers. I remember the musical “Oliver!”, when the homeless boy Oliver is told he has no choice but to sleep among the coffins. He cries out (or, rather, sings), “Where is love? Does it fall from skies above? Is it underneath the willow tree/ that I’ve been dreaming of?….”

Hanging Up Our Harps

Speaking of the willow tree, it immediately reminds me of a real-life sorrowful image in Psalm 137. Almost 600 years before Christ, after Jerusalem has fallen, all hope is lost for the Jewish people, and they have been taken away as prisoners to a foreign land:

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

There on the willows

we hung up our harps,

for there our captors requested a song;

our tormentors demanded songs of joy:

“Sing us some of the songs of Zion.”

How can we sing the Lord’s song

in a foreign land?”

Singing and music-making is usually the product of a contented or joyful heart. Even when I am playing therapeutic harp for a critically ill person, where there are tears and sadness, our spirits are united around the bedside in prayer, gratitude, and hopes for the blessed life of resurrection of the dying person. But the Jews in exile actually silenced their harps, hanging them on the branches of the willow trees, because they could not summon the spirit to sing to their abusers the joyful songs precious to their hearts. The King James version has it, “They who wasted us required of us mirth.”

When death and injury result from unforgiven violence and aggression on both sides, as in a war, the emotional and psychological wounds go so deep that the task of healing the hatred between sides can be a monumental one. Today, we have student riots on some college campuses over the war between Israel and Hamas, and we have two groups with grievances: the Jews lamenting the sexual violence and deathly brutality of the October 7 attacks and hostage-taking by Hamas, and the pro-Palestinian students grieving the ongoing terrible loss of innocent lives in Gaza as a result of the response by Israel. The ongoing war remains hideous for all affected. But, leaving out all discussion of complex motives, actions, and intentions on both sides, God leaves us with the radical question: In the face of such mutual deep grief, anger, and lamentation… where is love?

The Most Loving Thing

My beloved spiritual director, who was trying to teach me Catholic moral theology, had this saying: “If you cannot do the most loving thing in a situation, you must at least do justice.” (Father Thomas G. Dailey) If love is not visible in this case, what would justice look like? From the start, one might say it was not justice to construct an encampment that was known to be against University by-laws; and if you start with an injustice, things go downhill quickly. It is obvious that the “most loving thing” in this case can’t happen with bullhorns, loud mouths, barricades, and occupied buildings. Outside agitators don’t want justice, they want to fan violent flames. Neither love NOR justice can happen if students who pay tuition get assaulted or are too afraid to walk to classes. One encampment had yoga classes, singing, and meditation, but they weren’t shared with “the enemy,” only within the safe circle of the birds of a feather.

Leaving aside the hatred of Jews or chants for Israel’s eradication, I believe that most encamped students, if pressed, would say they are protesting out of love for the Gazan people. But in practical terms the whole encampment and barricade model appears dysfunctional. It may have succeeded in its purpose to “Disrupt, Disrupt, Disrupt” university life. But was that a loving goal? Because on most campuses the noise and disruption embittered the administration, when students wouldn’t disband the camps as requested. Destroyed was any chance for fruitful discussion, honest dialogue, or the possibility of understanding each side’s pain and despair. The sincere desire for peace in the hearts of many protesters (which they have in common with many Jewish students, ironically) will not be taken seriously, because of the chaotic “clownshow”, as some called it. Sadly, whatever sincere love is behind the students’ actions will never be acknowledged. There must be a deeper route to finding the way to real love.

Because real love is not just whatever we say it is. The slogan “Love is love” is false if what we call love is actually lust… or loneliness, or a desire to control. I am sure the encampment students felt united, as if they were having the proverbial Kumbaya kind of love. But we know from the wisdom of Marriage Encounter and Retrouvaille that love is not a warm or sexy feeling—“Love is a decision”, many decisions over time, to act in just and loving ways, as it says in Micah 6 : 8, “O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” To do love in this complex and intensely painful wartime situation will require that both sides have the humility to forgive each other from their hearts, and to learn to love mercy. But how do they reach that seemingly impossible goal of learning to love when there is so much heat, history, and hatred?

The Cost of Real Love

In our hearts, we all want the true love represented by the life and death of Jesus Christ—but true love always bears the wounds of sacrifice, and especially of that elusive virtue, compassion. I remember the day my nephew, a 17-year-old I’ll call Tom, called me to say he had been roughly “manhandled” by a teacher at his all-boys school during an incident. Tom was raging and wanted to sue or in other ways ruin the reputation of this teacher. I was racking my brain to think of what to say. I finally went with, “Tom, you don’t know what demons this guy is fighting. It must be bad, or he wouldn’t have gotten violent with you. Try to have some compassion for him.”

I added, “You know, the Latin root behind ‘compassion’ means ‘to suffer with’, com-patio.” That intrigued him! “What does that mean?” he asked. I said, it means you go to his level and realize that something is going wrong for him, that he is suffering, and that he lashed out like a bully because he feels afraid of something. I added, “Maybe he hates teaching boys!—maybe he’s going through a divorce. Maybe he’s ill. You don’t have to know or understand anything. You just mentally go to his level, and sit there with him. Sure, it’s a pain, but you’re sharing some suffering with him. That’s com-patio. Maybe say a prayer for him, if you can.” Tom said, “I’ll try that.”

Back to Jesus’ words: “This I command you—Love one another.” All of us, including the two parties in this warring conflict, must discover how to bring ourselves to that place of “com-patio”. Today especially, the hatred of Jews, which has brought so much death and destruction for so many decades, is again rising, and it is the challenge of all of us to examine our hearts, and if we find any prejudice or hatred in our souls, to do what is necessary to destroy that hatred forever.

The Wounded Healer

It may not be ethnic prejudice, or a war situation, but we all have some sad case of breakage or alienation in our lives that requires love to heal. Somehow, we must sit in silence, touch our own suffering, and, in that uncomfortable and desolate place deep in our souls, recognize the great depth of suffering we share with every living creature—especially those creatures who have hurt us, have killed our loved ones, or damaged us. Somehow, we have to face the life-changing truth that God loves them tenderly and dearly, just as God loves us.

This challenge requires bravery—to actually see our “enemy” as the beloved of God, can you even imagine it? Painful, bitter, want to avoid it. But it is the very definition of compassion, and will bring great peace to our souls.

Finally, we will be able to answer the question, “Where is love?” It will be within us. Then what joy it will be to take our harps down from the willows and “sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land”—because no one else’s heart will ever be foreign to us again.

Diane M. Schneider, May 6, 2024