Heavy Love

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it…It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?”― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Hate can be helpful to certain causes. It unites a group quickly, it gives a person identity—even if it is a negative one—and, most of all, it takes away doubt and all free-floating anxiety. It gives us a place to stand that feels superior and in control. Hate settles the dust and ambiguity that none of us like. Hate is much more common, and more immediately effective, than love. Hate, as we will sadly see below, makes the world go ’round.”― Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

Fear
Anger
Hate

Denied
Abandoned
Emptied

Love poured out
Overflowing to this very day
For all and each, not only some

Companion who says “I know”
Death defeated by love
Heavy heavy love

“But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God’s love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world — and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road.”― Brian Doyle, Credo