andersoj.org oddments

The Very Rev. Sam Lloyd, formerly of Trinity Church Boston and now the Dean of the National Cathedral recently gave an excellent sermon on a uniquely unsentimental, Christian concept of love. For those so inclined, the Cathedral also provides a RealAudio stream of the message. An excerpt:

A few years ago I read an account by a Chicago lawyer named Thomas Geoghegan describing his first encounter with a soup kitchen. He was overwhelmed by the unpleasant smells and the terrible shape the men were in, but most of all he was disturbed because he had expected to love the poor and to be filled with a warm glow, and he wasn’t.

And so he complained to his priest friend, who replied, “You’re not down there for self-actualization.” But Geoghegan protested, “I didn’t feel any love for them.” The priest replied,

So what?…The church says nothing about that…Look, these nuns [who run the kitchen] aren’t liberals. They are conservative…They don’t care about “love” in our modern, interpersonal way. We, the liberals, want love: we go to soup kitchens to be loved. The nuns go there to feed people. That’s it. Give them something to eat.

It’s that cool, clear, unsentimental love that you find in people whose lives are given to loving.

Lloyd is an artist. –JA