a conspicuous counterculture

in a conversation last night i caught it: a little sense of what it's like to be loved and respected. it's nothing like being talked at about ideals of love and respect.

prizing ideals of tolerance has lifted many people to a precipice of objectivity from which to judge the masses in the valley of the shadow of real-life decisions. and holding onto tolerance, people have found a way to dismiss their friends and neighbors as less and less important.

astrokid by madéleine at little love monster.

but my friend talked to me out of love and mutual respect, never looking down on me for my (often polemical) comments we so obviously disagreed about. he really cared about who i was beyond contextually hypothetical subjects like religion or politics. he loved me, the human.

i try hard to love humans too.

at a dinner party (hate those). i was recently asked by a european professor to talk about my experience with occupy. i started giving account of divisive violence in the camp i had been living in, about drugs and wasteful living; and then i mentioned the violence of the city - the police would hunt the houseless down on the freezing streets and harrass them, chasing them out of parks and public areas in the freezing

i told that professor that everyone deserves a plce to sleep, that everyone deserves to have the opportunity to live in community because they are human beings. i mused at somehow making this happen through a culture of love and dignity...

"you are a christian," she said. "what you're describing is christian love."

and what if it is? but surely i can't be 'defending' christianity...

maybe 'christianity' is a place that people are born, with no control over who will conceive them and birth them, with no sort of mandate with which to direct who will teach them to speak

maybe many parts of 'christianity,' when taken to their logical conclusions, are hateful, spiteful, destructive and represent a horrific doctrine on which to build a brand new world...

and yet in so many christian milieus those potentially destructive claims and mantras are never taken to their "logical" conclusions, and the law of the land is "love one another" rather than "stone the gays." what then?

what if philosophy has never been the underpinning of culture, if theology has never mattered in a practical sense to practical people?

if i never grasp another concept, i want to keep this one in mind: what is done trumps what is idealized.

what if love knows no 'other's?
as ever,

joel