The Man I Love

Originally published on The Nameless Valley Blogger (29 Mar 2014)

  I am in love with a man.  Shocking right? You might not want to hear about it but I would like to tell you about the man I love. This man I am in love with is older, by about 2000 years.  He is smart. He seems to know everyone and everything and anything that anyone has ever done.  Armed with that knowledge you would think he would be extremely judgmental and have a low opinion of humanity, I mean imagine the evil he has seen.  Really it is quite the opposite. He loves people, every last one of us.   His capacity to love people is amazing. He even loves those sinners; you know the ones, the 7 billion of them that inhabit this planet.

The man I love is kind.  He stands up for the poor and the oppressed.  He forgives wrongdoers, even the ones who have done wrong directly to him.  He would never throw a rock at someone as a punishment for their lifestyle, and he would never, ever, protest the funeral of a soldier to further a hate filled agenda. Again, the man I love does not hate people, he loves them.

That is not to say he is passive or permissive.  One of the things I love about him is that he knows right from wrong, it’s almost like he wrote the rules himself.  He calls me out when I’m wrong, and I am wrong a lot.  That is not judgment or condemnation. That is accountability.  He does not condone sin.  People seem to have this idea that because he hangs around with sinners that he is totally cool with sin. He is not. But the man I love would rather be a bright light for us than shine a bright light on us and all of our junk.

This wonderful man, I’ll call him “J”, he loves children.  He loves their minds, their hearts, and their ability to believe.  It saddens him when children suffer.  He wants every child to be loved and fed, and that is much more important than who happens to be holding the spoon.  I know, hard to imagine.  He just cares that much.

The thing is, and this is the thing that made me fall in love with him in the first place, “J” values love above all other things.  He loves us and wants us to love each other.  In fact, you know that old saying ‘love thy neighbor?’ He made that up!  If you want to know who your neighbor is, watch the movie “Gravity” starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.  When you see the big blue ball they orbit around, just know that everyone who lives on that ball is your neighbor, everyone.

I am sure by now you have figured out that the man I love is Jesus.  Maybe you love him too, maybe you don’t.  Maybe you would like to meet him and maybe you think he doesn’t even exist. That is your prerogative.   The purpose of this post is not to convert you to Christianity or try to “shove religion down your throat.” I am simply saddened by the misrepresentation of Christ in our culture.  Extremists on the right and on the left have propped up Jesus as a symbol of their cause when nothing could be further from the truth.  Jesus does not pick sides because all of humanity is of concern to him.  He does not rank sins in order of most to least heinous because to a perfect God all sin is the same.   He does not wave a red flag or a blue flag because believe it or not he is not even American! 

Jesus is love. He wants to take away your sins, not your sensibilities.

Listen up!

I am writing for a new blogging site called www.thenamelessvalleyblogger.com  This is the first piece I posted there...more are coming and I will link them here as well. Enjoy.

I love to talk. More to the point, I love to be heard.  It has been that way since I was young.  I remember the one consistency on my elementary school report cards was a check mark in the space designated for those who had a problem with “talking in class.”  Being heard, being visible, being significant, has always been an important thing to me. It makes sense that I chose to make a living in broadcasting. Being heard, being someone who matters, important stuff.

Talking has served me well. I have been very lucky to put a few meals on the family table through my abilities with the spoken word.  As I grow older, however, I am finding more and more that being heard, being noticed, talking…is overrated.  Sure, it is nice to have a voice, and my voice, like any other, has a right make itself heard.  But now I am beginning to really understand that there is something much more important to a life of meaning than being heard; and that is hearing.  More to the point, listening.

Hearing is involuntary. If you have working ears, you hear.  That is why I don’t like the term “selective hearing.” I prefer the term “selective listening.” We live in a world where we hear lots of things, but we control what we listen to. I call it the “earbud effect.”  With a pair of earbuds we can essentially tune out the entire world and listen to only that which gives us satisfaction and comfort.  That is dangerous, not because it might damage our ears (this is not really about earbuds, after all), but rather because it keeps us from experiencing and considering the voices of those with whom we might not agree, or those that make us uncomfortable.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”  --Ralph G. Nichols

We used to debate, and it was good! The reason was we listened to one another.  Yes, I wanted you to hear what I had to say, to understand my feelings, but I was willing to listen to you and consider your feelings as well.  Where has that gone?   Now instead of debating we argue, and the point is no longer to judge ideas based on their own merit but to win a shouting contest. 

This mindset has polluted everything from politics to religion and dominates pop culture.  We have become so afraid of being wrong, of being seen as the loser, we won’t even allow for the possibility that someone who opposes us could actually have good ideas.  We stopped listening. 

I find it amazing that great minds throughout history valued listening over talking, have learned more from their failures than their success and yet we continue to define our personal value by the sharpness of our tongues and the wars we win, however petty those may be.

One of the reasons I was interested in writing here was the idea that this would be a site where opposing viewpoints could co-exist in an atmosphere of civil discourse.  I have opinions. I am not a fence sitter, but I don’t want to sit so far on one side of the fence that I have no clue what is happening on the other. After all, the grass could very well be greener over there. 

We have two ears, one mouth. I believe that is intentional. It’s my goal to learn more than I teach, to listen more than I talk, and to be smarter tomorrow than I am today. Feel free to chime in, I am listening.