On Love - Part 3

This is my challenge -- to find a way to be loving towards the people that I honestly do not love. I do not love the Bush Administration. I am angry with him (and the people who work for him) almost every day. Even when I am at my most charitable, when I am most able to "be in his shoes," to try to see things from his perspective, I fail. That's just the truth of it.

I am unable, more often than not, to be hospitable, which in Henri Nouwen's words, is making space, for the "Other" which is G. Bush and the politicos like him. Despite often feeling like one of the "Others" who needs space (the very kind of space that G. Bush won't allow me), I find myself unable to grant the ones who think like him the same thing. Despite being one of the people who stands in the need of grace, I find myself unable to grant it.

Elsewhere Lamott writes about an episode in which a friend says, "I have had it with Hitler!" and she can hear herself say, "I have had it with Bush." My "I have had it" extends even beyond him. Fair or unfair, I have "had it" with Huckabee, Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Roberts, Brownback and Pelosi and Reid. And there are days when I have "had it" even with Clinton and Obama.

So I pray. Because if I am ever going to be loving, or hospitable, towards them, it will be a complete grace--that is, a gift of God. I see no other way. And if I don't love, I will just hate. And what a waste of energy that is turning out to be.