Love & Friendship

In Jane Austen's Lady Susan, the intrigue is immense. The laughable circumstances of a brilliant woman who has incredible power over the machine of society which she uses to gratify her boredom and to secure herself a husband.

Lady Susan is humorous, yet a treacherous woman and discovers as her plans come apart by fate favoring her virtuous daughter Frederica that the machine of men's hearts can follow a higher set of rules she knows nothing of. There is a character who gets the short end of the stick, Sir James. The man is an absolute dolt, at one point explaining why G-d gave the 12 Commandment to Moses on Sinai, when he is corrected that there were 10 he sets out to recall which two G-d did away with.

This week The Ringbearers gathered to engage in meditation on Loving our neighbours, even the ones who are hardest to consider "deserving" of our affection. As the nine of us began explaining what the process of loving the least lovable looks like.

Someone described it as looking for gold, at times the there is a gleaming surface, at others, there are layers of dirt to dig through to reach it. Very often the people who are hardest for us to love need love the most. After all, if we who are sensitive to the Command to Love, are hesitant who else will care for them? Of course, the desire to be loved ourselves may overpower our awareness of the needs those around us. If so then our idea of love needs to be returned to its place.

Satisfaction does not come from human sources. The ache is for somewhere we have never been and a home we've never known. Where all love has come from and where we are made whole.

As all the gold is revealed on a person a remarkable resemblance is likewise made known, she is created in the image of G-d. Glory bursts forth reflected on her face as she walks in the new creation that she was born again to be. The tragedy is so many people don't know that they are the treasure of heaven. No one considered them beyond the first impression to be worthy of the time or cost of loving. As daughters of G-d we have decided to make our floor community one the seeks to find the gold in each sister, hoping this practice will pour out into our other relationships. Iron sharpening Iron and gold being polished in preparation for our King.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us."
             1 John 4v7-12