Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

     Love.  I talk about it a lot in this blog.  That is because it is so central to Christianity, in Jesus-brand spirituality as my former pastor and friend used to call it.  According to my counselor, my ability to love is one of my biggest strengths.  But do I really know how to love?  Far from it.  Certain people in my life through certain actions have sent me into a burst of anger that comes out when I talk about them. If I really knew how to love, I would love my "enemies." I would forgive and forget. Because in love, there are no enemies. So why do I rage like this?  You could say it is because I am a fallen man living in a fallen world.  But that is using the garden of Eden as an excuse.  No, there is a much simpler explanation that does not scapegoat good old Adam.       Let me explain.  I've heard it said that the past and the present in our emotional lives are like the two wires that make up every electrical cord - positive and ground.  In their normal state

     I have been listening to U2's rousing rebel songs from Rattle N Hum all morning.  It is an album written at the height of the resistance to Apartheid in South Africa when I was in high school.  My five-month-old daughter is familiar with those songs because they are the embodiment of what love can do in the world.  They talk about Rev Martin Luther King and Bishop Tutu and death on the green battlefields of the new United States in the 1700's and that world-changing death on the cross. Love is not some nice touchy-feely feel-good emotion you keep for a time and then discard.  The best definition I have ever heard of love is also the most succinct: unconditional positive regard. Doesn't sound like much until you think of how hard it is to always see someone through rose colored glasses. But how can all of this come from love?  How does changing the world by throwing off the shackles of the repressed and the downtrodden and the poor come from love?      Love does not