Assistant Principal - Pastoral Care
Where is the Love?
Fifty-two years ago the ‘Summer of Love’ was in full swing and The Beatles’ song, ‘All You Need is Love’ was the soundtrack for a generation demanding that the world live in harmony and peace.
Half a century later our world needs a renewal of optimism and hope. Currently, India and Pakistan are staring each other down over the Kashmir; Iran and the West are playing dodgeball in the Straits of Hormuz; China and the USA are flexing over trade and the South China Sea; North Korea continues to experiment with long range missiles; Brazil seems to be hastening environmental vandalism on an unprecedented scale and random acts of terrorism find new ways to shock and appal us.
Is it any wonder that young people switch off and become disengaged from our wounded world, disillusioned with the mess adults are saddling them with, a mess exacerbated by accelerating climate change with few, if any leaders, wanting to sort it out in a meaningful way?
As challenging as it may seem, families and schools have to be places that imbue young people with not only hope for the future but also to empower them with ways to realise this hope. This is where our Christian faith is so important and instructive. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In this command we are provided a very clear way of how we should live our lives. Unfortunately, much of our culture heads us in a different direction. Capitalist-consumer culture demands high levels of self-interest with a voracious need for consumption.
When interviewed by Leigh Sales on the 7:30 Report, Bishop Michael Curry (famous for his sermon at Harry and Meghan’s wedding) made the following reply to the question, “what do you think is the biggest problem facing the world today?”
Let me tell you what I think is behind because there would be a number of issues. I really believe that the essence of our struggle can be found - as a human family - can be found in any form of unbridled selfishness. We have got to find a way to live together and for each other. That is why I believe that the way of love is the way that does that. I mean, this isn't really a sentimental thing that I am talking about. This is really an intentional way of living, of unselfish living and that will have consequences and impact on a whole host of issues, whether it is wars between nations, whether it is tribal conflicts, whether it is conflicts within countries, whether it is the extent of poverty in our global community. Whether it is care for this environment in which we live, whether it is for a means of justice and goodness and kindness in our social lives and compassion and kindness in our interpersonal lives.
Every one of those issues at the root of the cause of the problem is unbridled selfishness, which is what our religious traditions have actually meant by the word "sin". That is actually what we are really talking about, this kind of selfishness where I think, where I am the centre of the universe, and everybody else, including God, is on the periphery. That doesn't work. We have to live together and if we live together, we actually can make a better world. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be doing this.
The American philosopher, Cornel West, adds to these wonderful words of wisdom when he took part on the ABC’s Q&A a while ago:
I think part of the genius of the Christian tradition at its best... And this a prophetic version, which is always a slice. ‘Cause the Christian Church is founded on the bones of Peter, who denied Jesus three times. So, you have low expectations of such an institution. But the same Peter didn’t deny that he had denied him, as Chesterton says. And he is absolutely right. He bounced back. The history of our species is a history of hatred and envy and resentment and domination and oppression. And what Jesus tries to do, coming out of prophetic Judaic tradition, is to break it, to interrupt it, and says something that seems to be so weak in the world, love, is actually the most powerful when looked at through the lens of those who are willing to be crucified in order to bounce back. To learn how to die in order to learn how to live. That’s what it is to be Christian. And, therefore, you always have relatively low expectations, in terms of the overall project, but you have high expectations of the possibilities. That’s what the cross is about. That’s what Martin King was about. That’s what Dorothy Day was about. That’s what the great ones were.
But, now, Christians... I speak as a Christian, of course, so I have my biases. But I don’t think we Christians have any monopoly on this. We’ve got Buddhist examples, we’ve got Jewish examples, we’ve got agnostic and we’ve got atheistic examples. But the important thing is not to run out of gas. Don’t allow the despair to have the last word, don’t allow the hatred to have the last word, even if what seems to be so weak and feeble – namely your commitment to a love of neighbour and love of enemy – to bear witness and then to create some interruption.
As educators of young people it is so important that we don’t allow “despair to have the last word”. To do this we must live a life of love. Both as parents and teachers we need to be exemplars for young people that love can triumph against power and cynicism and self-interest. As West argues, love can cause “interruption” meaning that it can challenge the dominant norms that our power structures in society have created.
St Francis gives us an insight to how we can do this in our lives when he said: “Preach Jesus, and if necessary use words.” That is, live our lives intentionally so that our actions reflect the vision provided to us through Christ’s death and resurrection – ‘love one another’. This begins with the way we treat each other – how we speak to and about others. One of the fathers in the SBS series, The Hunting, used a beautiful Lebanese proverb when talking with his son which in fact is the underpinning metaphor of the series: ‘If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden. If your thought is a thorn, you are fuel for the fire.’
To be a Christian means that we are to be wounded as Christ was. Again, this is a concept that flies in the face of what our dominant culture indoctrinates us to think – we are constantly urged to be more attractive and successful and watchable and influential and followable – anything but wounded. The American, Cardinal Bernadin from Chicago said: “As Christians, if we are to love as Jesus loved, we must first come to terms with suffering. Like Jesus, we simply cannot be cool and detached from our fellow human beings”. Whilst we may not be in a position to end suffering all over the world, we do need to respond to the suffering about us – the person who feels excluded, the person who struggles to learn, the person who doesn’t quite fit in, the person who is different to us, the person who is suffering emotionally or psychologically or financially and so on. To do this may require us to be ‘wounded’ – to stand against the popular group, to appear to be weak or ‘soft’, to be seen as a ‘goody-two shoes’ or a ‘suck-up’ (notice how the language that criticises people for doing the right thing is intended to wound and often connotes weakness). But it is by acting out of love that we begin to change the world, it is how we create a more just and inclusive community and to do this may require us to be wounded but in doing so, the wounds become springboards for growth and learning.
Just as in the Old Testament where the poets and writers helped people to imagine the world as it should be, so to have our poets, like The Beatles or even more contemporary groups such as the Black Eyed Peas, challenged us to envision how we should be living our lives. In their 2003 song, which has had nearly half a billion views on Youtube, we can see in the extract below how the Black Eyed Peas echo this theme of love calling for “guidance from above”:
People killin' people dyin'
Children hurtin', I hear them cryin'
Can you practice what you preachin'?
Would you turn the other cheek again?
Mama, mama, mama, tell us what the hell is goin' on
Can't we all just get along?
Father, father, father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me
Questioning
Where's the love?
Love is the key
Where's the love?
Love is the answer
Where's the love?
Love is the solution
Where's the love?
Where's the love?
They don't want us to love
Where's the love?
Love is powerful
Where's the love?
Where's the love?
As your young men and women struggle their way through life I urge you to keep encouraging them to respond with love because it is the one solution that has stood the test of time.
Mr Mick Larkin - Assistant Principal - Pastoral Care