A Special Love

 

 A Special Love

When addressing friends do you see each as special?  Are you condescending with them?  Do you pay attention to how they look?  Do you have other underlying motives?  You should however look beyond their appearance.  Every individual ought to be treated with the utmost respect.  This is what you must practice when you greet them.  Do you dazzle the world with your talent?  Robert Browning (1812–1889) did this with poems, plays, and pamphlets.  His wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was more successful with her works.  In Sonnet 43, she expressed a limitless love:

 “With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.”

 There was sincerity in this love she shared.  This was a supreme, knew no boundaries, or distinctions.  She just loved the saints.

 Why try to control others?  The best results come when you cooperate in the workplace, at play, and during sports.   Farm worker and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) wrote, “From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.”  Through management and workers alike, officials bring dignity to a working environment.  A Brazilian novelist and lyricist Paulo Coelho (b. 1947) wrote, “I can control my destiny, but not fate.  Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street.  I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed.”  For better or worse Coelho cited the choices people make.  He stressed their importance in determining the nature of relationships.  Aim not to make distinctions between the job of a janitor with that of your boss.  A worker should be contributing his or her best efforts for the common good.

 Wings on Ideas

 It takes love to put wings on your ideas.  The way people see the world is important. It will not be in our best interest like novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), who considered the world governed by sheer chance and natural laws.  Life is not just a series of coincidences that is why in loving Christ believers become complete.  They will discover that divine realities govern situations.  These are the wings of love revealing themselves.  People regardless of their class, distinction, and creed should be cherished.

 Friends must love one another.  Carp Diem is a Latin aphorism that means, “Living to the fullest right now and having the opportunity to seize the moment.”  Our success is not merely, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” wrote Roman poet Horace (65 BCE– 8 BCE).  It is more than that. It is being able to capture the essence of life.  However, it becomes imperative that you are caring members of society.  In life’s journey you should love one another, and resist making distinctions about people.  Jesus Christ taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  So, let your love be like that of poet Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love:”

 “Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.”

 Or, like that of the poet and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (1552? –1618) in “The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd” - “To live with thee and be thy love.”

Marlowe and Raleigh’s love is engrossing.  They would have done much because it was authentic.  Jesus Christ showed this example because he died on the Cross at Calvary.  His love was more than between couples and friends.  It was superior, ultra-special, boundless, and distinctive in its saving grace.