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Notifixious

The next day and a half, panic will grip the hearts of many: will the expressions of love we offer be acceptable to the ones we give our hearts to? Yes, Valentine's Day is Tuesday, the festival of flowers and chocolate and cards. It is a day of declaring love and recommitting to our relational promises. It is a day of judgment.

Let me share this wisdom: the relationship continued or broken on the strength of what is or isn't offered on Valentine's Day is not in good health. That's a relationship that is living in constant testing, multiplying conditions of what each person must do and meet to keep it going.

Loving perfectly may be outside our human capacity, but there is a vast difference between loving well and manipulating people with tests that are called proof of love. How will you care for and grow in steadfast love in your existing relationships?

Steadfast love shows itself every day, in thousands and millions of ways, from refraining from berating one's partner in life to a kind touch in passing. Steadfast love calls us back to forgiveness, invites us daily into generosity, and keeps opening our hearts when we would really be far more comfortable closed and afraid. Steadfast love is most evident when we are most challenged, least feeling able to be loving, but we stay the course and keeping loving anyway -- that's why we call it "steadfast" and not "fleeting". 

Steadfast love belongs as a spiritual practice and human possibility to all of us. Steadfast love is not limited to our partners, our families, or our friends. The Bible teaches in fact that the surest proof of our capacity for steadfast love and way to grow it is how we welcome and care for strangers and for our neighbors (only a handful of exampes: Gen. 18:1-5, Deut. 10:19, Leviticus 19:34, Book of Ruth, Matt. 25:35, Hebrews 13:2.)

This Valentine's Day - and every day - how will you and those you already love be caring for strangers and attending to the dreams and cares of your neighbors?

This week's lection was a study in the power of transforming love, its generosity, and its restoration. This prayer is offered in that spirit.

Transforming Love open our hearts to service without expectation of reward, of fame, of fortune, or even of joy. Instead, help us serve in the true life of love, generously, into our discomfort zones. When we find ourselves meeting our expectations proudly on the road, grant us laughter and self-recognition and humble joy that we may proceed another way. When we pride ourselves on serving others and forget to turn back to You, Beloved, do come gather us up and set us down in the garden of wonder, for a quiet time in full appreciation and awe in Your Creation, the diversity and abundance of gifts beyond our own, and the astounding miracles that occur in making space for them. Transform us in Love, Holy One, and keep on that transformation as we turn with you in serving goodness and peace in this world. Amen.

Each month in 2012, I am offering a monthly prayer here in addition to or instead of the daily prayers posted to Universalist Prayers. The theme this month is hospitality.

Beloved teach us to open our shuttered hearts and our portioned and boarded up spirits with bold generous and with courageous hospitality. Estranged and alienated so often and from so much, sustain us in making circles of welcome out of gatherings of strangers. Around the table of wonder, meet us in abundance, drawing out our stories and showing us how to weave together community with steadfast love. The wells of life are our responsibilities; teach us to care for them together, with forbearance, forgiveness, gratitude, and rejoicing. When we are cast out and wandering, may we find welcome and compassion that calls us back into accountable relationship, into the ways of healing, into the ways of peace. Generation after generation has wrested and exiled or been dispossessed. Generation after generation has learned anew how to make welcome, how to make home wherever they are, however they are, and how to welcome You, Beloved, in welcoming enemies, strangers, and exiles into a life of transforming love. Amen.