Re: Price of loving. It takes a village.

Palos Verdes Drive is slowly rolling it's hills into the sea - creep is the name of the Geologic process on the precipice of angle of repose.
As my ministry goes - it takes a village.
As PV Dr. goes - it takes a village - into the sea.
On 2/21/24 10:20, DisneyWizard the Fantasmic! wrote:

Food I'm fine, toilet paper and sanitizer I can't afford. But all I really need is love.
    When I was first ordained I had two assignments, the first one a refugee camp, the second has been in the news recently for sliding closer to Portuguese Bend. The news reports Sunday had been the final services.  A lovely open atrium style airy stone-&-glass chapel, designed by Lloyd Wright & set in a redwood grove I was assigned 6 months to a loving congregation as councilor and a wedding or two on Wednesdays when the Wayfarer's Chapel chief pastors day off.
    The experience was two sides of the same coin so to speak - a contrast of abject wealth and dire poverty. Refugees had nothing, would sell their hair, would sell their feces if they could find a buyer., But they found joy in family, comradery and solidarity of community fenced in an open field of makeshift tents, of waste, and of love.
     Later I'm invited to Rancho Palos Verdes Estates for dinner with a couple to which I've been assigned to assist with marriage counseling. She's going off about how the blacksmith is overcharging for fitting horseshoes, how the pool service sucks (what really happened was a small old Japanese man replaced the bronze 19 year old hunk she signed up for) topping a long list of the complaints in their lives. He was bitching about traffic from LAX, parking fees, something wrong with the Jaguar and It spends more time at the mechanic than in his garage, he couldn't get almonds on the flight and the long lines and delays out of Heathrow, didn't feel like first class topping the list of life complaints most recent from his business trip.
The biggest complaint they had with each other was the amount of money hemorrhaging away between them.
    To bring them together I mentioned the refugees found love in shared nothingness. You are fat, happy, with a fridge full of food, a passport and ticket in hand - a refugees dream. Your greatest concerns are insignificant by comparison. Forget all that material concern - it interferes with and detracts, undermining your opportunities to remind oneanother each day "I love you." You can find love when you regard and are concerned more for you spouse than yourself. Marriage is a contract of mutual respect, shared emotion and which grants permission to be intimate with each other. Ain't that the best excuse to love?
 Go forth and know you are loved.

--
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