Forms of Love

Yesterday we were at Green Lakes, one of the prettiest of parks in Upstate New York. Neighbors on our street were holding a birthday bash. Tom is lucky enough to have been born in late summer so he can throw a party at picnic tables next to open water with a sandy beach and swimming safe for kids. Every year. Yesterday was pitch-perfect August. Hazy warm sun and a steady breeze off the water; it felt a continuous caress. The lakes were formed at the end of the last ice age, fifteen thousand years ago a melting glacier gouging two enormously deep basins in the earth. Then all these years later we sit around and talk, marriage and politics, work and friends, books and TV. In the middle there is the usual lost child, the scary announcement followed by mass exodus from the bathing area. Then after a tense minute or so a glad reunion somewhere and permission to re-enter the water. Meanwhile the breeze continues to play on shoulders and backs, arms and legs, an enormously generous lover.

Paul in the New Testament tells us that the form of this world is passing away. But that’s so it can be replaced by another. It took thousands and thousands of years of geology to produce the form of Green Lakes. And all the weather that’s ever been, the sun, the air, the water, to spring that delightful wind off the lake into our faces. But human time is quicker than geological and climate time, especially lately. We’ve sped things up considerably. It is logical then to believe that Paul’s prediction is being fulfilled even as we speak. As we sat around at Green Lakes yesterday we enjoyed a particular form of the earth that had been prepared for us over eons and we were largely unconscious of its huge labor as we enjoyed its blessing. The form of the cross—its forgiveness, compassion and nonviolence—is growing in the world every day of our lives, and the job of contemporary Christians is to understand what that means and proclaim it. It’s nothing to do with that old tired, wretched business transaction between the sacrificial victim Jesus and God, paying the divinity off in a manner worthy of the most awful underworld (o.k paesan, kill my only son for his assets, and I’ll consider us quits!). No, it’s the infinite wisdom of the Eternal Lover translating the violent form of humanity into something almost inconceivable but which we know by the names of peace and love.

Incidentally, there were quite a few Wood Hath Hopers there at Green Lakes enjoying the sunshine. Heather, Dana, Linda and me at the party. And as I was heading home I saw Sue and John there too.