Monday Afternoon

We’re working out of all of our devices today…laptop, tablet, and two cell phones. This is the reality of management change in the current era of health care in America. Double your pleasure, double your fun. There are so many moving parts, you know. As a friend says, so it goes.

I worked for a not-for-profit hospice ministry until today. Now, I work for a for-profit hospice company. The conceptual difference is mind numbing. The practical differences are just as astonishing. “Measurable results” are a thing and it’s how you know you are “doing work.” I am a skeptical smurf.

Today’s Franciscan Nugget: “Day Twenty Six - The Second Note, cont'd - Therefore, we seek to love all those to whom we are bound by ties of family or friendship. Our love for them increases as their love for Christ grows deeper. We have a special love and affection for members of the Third Order, praying for each other individually and seeking to grow in that love. We are on our guard against anything which might injure this love, and we seek reconciliation with those from whom we are estranged. We seek the same love for those with whom we have little natural affinity, for this kind of love is not a welling up of emotion, but is a bond founded in our common union with Christ.”

Godly love is a hard kind of love to embody. Loving someone with whom we have little affinity is difficult. Some would say it is impossible. But this is the thing about persons created in the Image of God. God’s nature is to love. So is our nature. We were put on this earth to love and not simply when it is convenient. Sometimes we are called to love even when we cannot imagine doing so. Thus, love becomes a practice for us rather than a feeling. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Divine love is often inconvenient…perhaps even dangerous (says the southern white guy).

Yes, social location matters. I have had friends state that they could not imagine praying for their enemies because they could not imagine that they had any. They were white and most of them male. Privilege is not having to pray for one’s enemies, I guess.

That’s what I have today.

Y’all be excellent to each other.

Here is Grouchy Smurf…for the algorithm.