I owe the title of the blog to bell hooks, one of my favorite authors of late. ”Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”
We live in a culture that does not teach us how to love. We are taught that love is an emotion. It is a good feeling, a high. Something we “fall” in to. But this is not the love that Jesus is talks about. To love your neighbor is an action. Love is a verb. Something that you do, not feel. And it is something that you must commit to. Although you can have feelings of love, true love is when the act of loving continues even when you don’t feel the emotion. Say, loving your enemies for example. And telling people that you love them means nothing if loving action does not follow. I think that our world would be such a different place if we all chose to practice love. As hooks says, “The practice of loving is the healing force that brings sustained peace. It is the practice of love that transforms.”
Love is as love does.
It transforms. ”When we choose to love we choose to move against fear - against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect - to find ourselves in the other.” Loving action toward a person or group that we have viewed as “other” has an amazing way of changing our view of that person or group. We learn empathy. We learn to always try to imagine what life is like and looks like from another’s perspective.
Love is as love does. As love sees. As love thinks.
The practice of love is the practice of faith. “A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act.” Most of us might believe that we should love our neighbor as ourself, but how often do we do this? How often do we pick and choose whom to consider as our neighbor, when it is very clear in the life and teachings of Jesus that we are to see each and every human being as our neighbor? In today’s context and language, Jesus might tell you to love the terrorist as yourself, love the Buddhist as yourself, or love the immigrant as yourself, just for a few examples. Faith without works is dead. Love is as love does.
(All quotes from All About Love: New Visions, by bell hooks)
