Your love is teaching me how, how to kneel.

Feast of St. Monnica of Hippo.

Wow. I'm running around the Blogosphere today like a chicken with my head cut off. We've got people yelling 'terrorist bomb!' about gays in the Bishop of California's Chair, poor Cynthia is getting yelled at for saying she's not only standing up for her gay best friend forever's committment ceremony, but she also *gasp* went clubbing with him, on the ecumenical front, the Velveteen Rabbi takes on those pesky lines in Leviticus, and I really, really, REALLY don't want to get into the Illegal Personages debate (how can a human being be illegal? I hadn't noticed a law against existing [yet]).

What, in the Name of all that's Good, Blessed, Right and Holy is going on here?

I'll tell you what's going on here. We're treating love like it's a finite commodity, that's what's going on. We're drawing these lines in the sand (gay/straight, legal/illegal, conservative/liberal) so we can say "Yes, yes, I'm on the right side, and I will feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and visit the imprisoned and bury the dead... but only if they're from my side of the line! The people from the Other Side, they're different from me and they're bad and naughty and even EVIL and I am NOT going near them, 'cause they're going to taint me and make me not!perfect."

'Scuse me, people, but if you're a Christian, your job is to go right up to that line, kick sand over it as you cross, and get busy loving your neighbor, no matter the status of their documentation, the direction of their orientation, or their political party.

*sigh* Oh, it's so easy for me to jump up on my soapbox. I think the blog phenomenom has just created a giant Hyde Park, where we can pontificate as well as any old German guy in Rome. "How am I living this out in my own life?" my concience asks me. "How can you tell people to love their neighbor when you're so very pissed off at your cousin?"

"Hey, I'm working on my anger!" I tell my concience.

"Taking it out, looking at it, giving it a good polish, and then putting it back in the box is not working on it," my concience snaps back. "Start forgiving your cousin for all the real and imagined hurts."


"Don'wanna!" I whine.

"You're a Christian," my concience says, smacking me upside the head. "Whether you like it or not. So get busy lovin', or get busy dying."

"Why are you quoting Stephen King movies to me?" I ask my concience.

"Stop changing the subject."