“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” --C. S. Lewis

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“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” --C. S. Lewis
Some days I’m Toto, and others, I’m Dorothy, twirling in the cyclone of chaos we’re in. We’re not in Kansas any more. In truth I am a man in love with a woman who I, in faith, believe loves me as a friend and our friendship is the greatest love I’ll ever know on this mortal coil. I am as loyal to her as nothing I can understand beyond using the Sufi metaphor for the love of the ‘Devil’ for God. In the myth God says “Be Gone!” and the ‘Devil’ took that as his greatest love and left Heaven behind.
My understanding of grace began long ago with Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and is now reconciled with his “To Have, and Have Not.” Perhaps it is inappropriate for me to use/abuse, works that others would understand differently . . . but in life and death I’ll stick with mine, as I do the sense that The Bible is my Handbook, or Owners Manual, for life.
Again, and yet again, I use Confucius’s rendering of the Golden Rule; "How about 'shu' [reciprocity]: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself(?)"
We are collectively and individually caught in two dimensions: a Tsunami and enveloped in a gossamer web of love with our Creator and all life. In advance I ask you to forgive this simpleton’s conclusion that it is the work of love to accept the beloved as having a equal voice; and through that come to understand the meaning of Jesus’ “Love your enemy.” God will not do for us what we must agree to do amongst ourselves now. Regardless of the power to destroy, there is a greater power capable of making love and life possible.
“The Golden Rule” has a special meaning since it was introduced, conceptually, to me by Bert Bigelow, a onetime neighbor of my parents. He and is wife sailed into the Atomic Test site mid-Pacific ocean to  protest the weapon.
Courage to love and act is a talent/genius we all possess, yet it is too often avoided or ignored. The beloved friend did not announce to me that she was a psychologist until after she had saved me from suicide. Our relationship informs my opinions and choices in regard to all things. It is my prayer for all of us that we find such a level of cooperation and move forward making sense of the chaos we are now in. Regardless of resources we have a communal family to reconcile with the future.