Community & Love

Living in community is never easy. "As long as we are on the earth the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because love is the resetting of a body of broken bones" (Merton). Chinatown is the current residency of my heart and energy, but I am also part of this interfaith community and wondering what that means in our daily living together. What practices can bind us together while strengthening our personal traditions? Lately, I have been doing zazen (seated meditation) and for now it is the most natural and nurturing ritual for my faith.

The other day Kate said to me, "People are always saying Jesus loves you. Why don't they just say I love you?" and in that way begin to embody the radical love of Jesus, instead of projecting the difficulty of loving away from the self? Love as a word has lost nearly all its meaning in our language. Love isn't simply pleasant, love is a crown of thorns. It requires the work of opening up to vulnerability (including negative emotions) and learning to face our shadow sides, to sit with the deep, deep still, to speak honestly and bravely, to remain humble. As David Foster Wallace said, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” 


We are all unskilled, messy lovers and I am finding that living in this community is bringing to surface my own lack of understanding of what it means to love others and challenging me to struggle, to live by my own small-deaths. I am asking myself again and again, "what does it mean to love?" (to love my community on Soledad street, to love the people I live with, to love my scattered-lovers, to love God, myself, my environment.) Mm. 

(Reflections on Love: "Love, Reality, and the Time of Transition.")