The last of the four traditional values of advent is love. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love are the ways we look for God breaking into our world again and again during the season of advent, which is the four weeks before Christmas.
Love is the simplest thing in the world and the most complex. We have all sorts of classifications of love such as romantic love, a parent’s love for a child, love of our fiends, love of a good wine, love of a place or a time or an experience, love of things. Love is all around us and yet it’s hard to always be loving or to feel loved.
Love of neighbor is the core of our faith community here at Sellwood. We want to make a difference in the world and we do so by loving the people around us. It’s not always easy. We have some very difficult people that we interact with and we as a community are helping each other to extend love to those grumpy, complaining, angry folks. You see it’s easy to love nice people and it’s easy to love the people who are like us. Our community comes together at our dinners to grow in our spirits so that we can love more fully everyone we engage with in our lives. Each of us brings that love in a different way, and each circumstance requires a unique way of being present.
One thing we have learned as a community is that being nice and loving someone are not the same thing. Tough love is so named because setting boundaries, taking a stand, and speaking truth can all be very difficult to do. Loving someone may cause them to become angry with us. Navigating all of this is part of how we as a community walk together so that we can share God’s love in healthy and whole ways. Sometimes we challenge one another and that can be tender. Yet our trust in one another’s love allows us to continue in relationship.
This Christmas I hope you experience love in all it’s multifaceted glory.
-Eilidh
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