Diane, Dave and Zona Fred

Diane, Dave and Zona Fred
The advocate, the shoe-less one and the pooch

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

To make justice...

To make justice...
Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment or being drawn toward. Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relations with one's friends and enemies.

Love creates righteousness, or justice here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of ... the [marginalised and] poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience.

I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds. For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called 'love'. Love is a choice - not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense of guile.

Love is a conversion to humanity - a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh." Isabel Carter Heyward, 1984, 272

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