holiday

I've been considering love, humble love. Such a love is capable of penetrating a cold world, for its strength is incalculable, it is marvelous, beautiful. For in such love we find the clearest and most refined reflection of His love; such servant-hearted devotion. But, it is hard for our human hearts to love in such humility. It is hard for us to love at all, sometimes, and yet to love in a humble way is the hardest of all. I forget to love so often in my everyday exchanges. And if I remember and happen to feel in the mood to love, I do, but then that really isn't love at all, least of all a humble love. "For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but forever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can," wrote the author, Fyodor Dostoevsky. He described such all-embracing humility as "an ocean... flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth." In his book, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky recounts a scene wherein a man of society flew in a rage and gave his orderly two bloody blows to his face. After the quieting of his "brutal humor" the story continues,

"I hid my face in my hands, fell on my bed and broke into a storm of tears... That is what a man has been brought to, and that was a man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It was as if a sharp dagger had pierced me through... And I remembered my brother and what he said on his deathbed to his servants: 'My dear ones, why do you wait on me, why do you love me, am I worth your waiting on me?'"

Oh, why is it so easy to hate and so hard to love? Why is it much easier to speak in pride and harshness, strike out in anger, or brandish violence and yell at that stupid driver who obviously doesn't know how to merge? I am trying to make love a top priority in my daily life. But, its easier to make my well being a priority rather than someone else's. I have enough to worry about, keeping my life together, do I need the added exercise? I admit, I'd much rather focus on my individuality, my security, my peace. But, is peace secured by a silent mouth? By an individualistic, partially loving, nonspeaking heart? It can't be, for peace is attained by the great opposite-- by the opening of one's mouth and heart in all-compassing brotherly love, and by the death of one's personal status and advantage. "Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die" (Dostoevsky).

. . .

"What!" they asked, "are we to make our servants
sit down on the sofa and offer them tea? And I answered them:
"Why not, sometimes at least." Everyone laughed.
Their question was frivolous and my answer was not clear;
but the thought in it was to some extent right."

-The Brothers Karamazov

. . .