"The essence of what we do is love and love. According to history and sacred writings, love always perseveres. It doesn't give up. If you really love God and your neighbors, you don't give up. That's the message."
Words are funny. These quoted above are drawn from a Des Moines Register article about mirroring protests at the Capitol yesterday by gay marriage supporters and opponents. During their Thursday session the Iowa House of Representatives responded to two attempts to move forward enabling legislation toward a constitutional amendment that would exclude the same-sex marriages for which the State Supreme Court had opened the door last Friday. Both sides in the debate were amply represented to express their convictions.
But as I say, words are funny. Which side invoked the persevering qualities of love cited above? Which side asserted steadfastness in their determination to love; that ultimately this entire debate is about love? The answer, of course, is in the article itself, and I will leave you to read it for yourself. My point is simply to note that either side could have spoken them. Both voices speak of love and its power to motivate, drive, and sustain. Both sides claim that what their efforts are really all about is the desire to love.
And yet these loving motivations have drawn these two loving voices into opposite sides of the House Visitor's Gallery where they eventually shout and decry each other into escorted removal from the chambers.
"The essence of what we do is love and love."
What a funny, funny word. Love: so vigorously defended, so righteously asserted, so achingly desired, so conflictually invoked, so torturously defined, and so rarely...
...practiced.
"The essence of what we do is love and love." Who said it? The fact is, it hardly matters. Everyone, after all, says it, and unfortunately means opposite things in the invocation of it. The real question is who will stop saying it long enough to actually demonstrate a little of it?
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