If you don't have at least one deep dark, shameful and terrifying secret to be shared with other people, there are only three possibilities as to why. Either you have already shared with others everything about yourself, or you are completely blind to your own humanity, or you are the most plain, most boring, most un-human person to have ever lived. May God save us from being the third, deliver us from being the second, and know us as the first.

I think I'm still trying to recover from the past two weeks. Sorry I'm not more coherent than I am…

A year or two ago my folks were in town for a visit, and during a drive to get burgers with my dad, he reminisced for a few moments about his dad. "[My two brothers] and I were all very different from one another," he said. "And you know, my dad, he was a different dad to each one of us. He seemed to know how to be the particular dad that each of us needed him to be." And then, as his face gracefully broke, he added, "And he was good at being all three of them."

I made a mental note.

I tend to think that if you are afforded enough time as a parent, and if you have more than one kid, you sort of figure this out along the way. At the least, you realize it in the back of your mind, if for no other reason than what "works" with one kid may not work with another. This becomes self-evident in disciplining a child, and in simply trying to get them to do what you need them to do. But my dad's point is much bigger than this; it's deeper than cataloging the obvious results of spankings versus timeouts versus taking away cell phones and canceling sleepovers. It's really about seeing and connecting with your kids as individuals. It's about respecting them as people. It's about helping them learn who they are, how to be who they are, that it's okay to be who they are, and that you love them no matter who and what they are. One of the greatest things about being the parent of more than one kid is that you learn you can love a kid with your whole heart—more than life itself—and that, strangely, you can love another very different kid with your whole heart—more than life itself—yet the loving is manifested in very different ways. Love is Love, but it has so many, many different ways of being and expressing itself.

And I think there's more to it than this, too. For one thing, loving your kids is about loving them as God's children, not as your own. For another thing, loving your kids is about loving them in terms they can intuitively grasp via their own uniquely created nature; about offering them love in ways that they can recognize as loving. And lastly, this isn't merely about parents and kids—it's about all of us.

Nearly two months ago I published a post about what it may mean to live a Christian life, and said that a good place to start looking for answers is to ask two questions: what does it mean to love God, and what does it mean to love other people? In my life I am still and always searching for clearer answers to these questions. I find pieces as I bumble along my way, little tidbits and trinkets here and there, and a few of them seem to come around often. Among them are that the people we love do not belong to us; they belong to God. To love them rightly is to love them for who and what they are in God. To love like this requires a tremendous amount of faith, of humility, of patience, of acceptance and of care on our part, because who and what another person may be in God is a great mystery, hidden between that person and God alone, and not even fully revealed to that person. To love a person means, for one thing, to live with him or her in a faith—sometimes a very frightening faith—in the reality of the mystery, and to aid in its discovery. To love another person involves entrusting their life and path to God. To love a person means to help that person entrust his or her life and path to God. To love a person means helping him or her know that God can—and does—love him or her far better than you ever can or will. To love another person is to allow God to love them through you whenever God can, and to get out of God's way whenever he can't. Loving a person means believing strongly enough in God's mystery for them that you do not hide its light under the bushel of your own ego. Loving a person means learning that we are not the One who most loves him or her, nor are we the One that he or she is supposed to love the most. Loving a person means realizing that they do not exist for us, but for God. It means rejoicing in this fact. And it means striving to make it true on Earth, as it already is in Heaven.

I'm not sure why this is on my mind today, but I've a pretty good idea that it's because I just wrote a quick paper on book three, chapter twelve of Augustine's De doctrina Christiana, which reminded me that Augustine was one of those folks that makes me think, Geez. How can somebody have such great ideas, yet have such horrible ideas?

Augustine's idea of biblical interpretation was that no matter how you interpret a figurative selection of scripture, as long as your interpretation promotes love for God and/or love of another, then your interpretation is correct. (I'll ignore his discussions about what is "figurative" and what is not). In fact, Augustine says that once a person comes to the state of loving God, he or she really doesn't even need to read the Bible anymore. In principle, Augustine was a big fan of the love of God. This, and his rather brilliant inversion of rhetorical eloquence from the classical notion of how something was said, into the notion of the meaning of what was said, are two things I like about Augustine. Beyond that, well, I'm not so sure.

Be that as it may, I'll get back on track. Whenever Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied that it was to love God with all of one's heart, mind, soul and strength, and that the second was to love one's neighbor as one's self (see, e.g., Mark 12.28ff). This wasn't Jesus' own, original interpretation of Judaism; of the six hundred-some laws at the time, these two were, in fact, numbers one and two, and his quote comes probably from Deuteronomy 6.4 and Leviticus 19.18. Jesus also said that all of the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments (see Mt 22.36ff). For me personally, what is more meaningful is that when Jesus knew he was going to be arrested (either by divine foreknowledge or simply because he was bright and saw the writing on the wall; take your pick), his final instruction to his disciples was to love one another (Jn 13.34, 15.12 and surrounding context). I consider this in the following way: when Jesus was about to face trial, and knew either that he was going to be executed or might well be executed, he had one last chance to leave his teaching with those closest to him. How did he do that? He distilled it down to its essence: love one another.

I don't believe that there is much of Christendom that would deny this. I tend to believe that any serious Christian is able to quote these two commandments. I tend to believe that Christendom is mostly united on this intellectual point. But here's the rub: what does it mean to love God with our whole being, and what does it mean to love others as our self? What is it like to love in this way? What does it lead us to be, and how does it call us to live? It is at this point that things get very, very grey, the flywheel goes crazy, and things start coming apart at the axle.

But, I think this is still the best starting point for those of us who want to be Christians in a devoted way. If a person is serious about living a Christian life, it seems to me that the best place for him or her to start is by asking, "What does it mean, what does it really mean, to love God, to really love God, with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength? And, what does it mean, what does it really mean, to love others as myself?" These are the questions that define a life.

I'll end with something I've said before, and will say again: the Jesus story, to the extent that it has been rejected by some, has not been rejected primarily on grounds of historicity. It is the enormous challenge posed by the immense depth of the love espoused by Jesus, rather than any intellectual debate, that has caused serious emphasis upon his story to often be viewed with great skepticism. Jesus called us to accept more than we are willing to accept, to reject more than we are willing to reject, to love more than we are willing to love, and to give more than we are willing to give. Jesus called us to live within the reign and rule of God, and we are typically unwilling to do so. This is why people like you and me killed him in the first place. And, it is no great surprise that we are still murdering him today, in ways both small and large. The culpability falls upon many, many of us—but perhaps most of all upon those of us who are religious, and who, like those before us, continue to crucify Jesus in the name of our human doctrines.

A year or two ago, I started writing a post about falling in love at first meeting. You know, you meet somebody, and in just a minute or two, you feel a connection in your soul, and you think, "I love this person." Well, the reveal at the end of the post was that I was writing about a little girl who was about six years old at the time, and who happens to be blind. She calls herself "Yozzie," although I have no idea what her real name is or how I'm supposed to spell her preferred nickname.

Whenever I'm in the correct mood, which is to say I'm not in a hurried and/or self-absorbed state of mind, I try to kneel down when I talk to little kids. I like to be on their level physically, because it helps to put us on the same level in other ways. They know I care enough to be right there with them on their terms, and I'm forced to be so. (Try it sometime. It works.) So on this particular day, I knelt in front of this little blind girl, we talked for a few moments, and she held out her hands to touch me. She even asked first, which I'm going to guess is a point of etiquette she'd been taught. So she placed her little hands on my shoulders, my chest, my neck and the sides of my face. Maybe she wanted to know what I looked like in her mind, or maybe she was just trying to remember me. Or both. But, what really amazed me was how much different it felt to be touched by this little blind child than to be touched by anybody else. I really, truly felt like she was seeing me. It was one of the most careful, thoughtful, gentle touches I've ever experienced. It was beautiful. I doubt I'll ever forget it.

I have a very, very soft spot in my heart for the way that life always strives to find a way to keep living; to make the most of whatever it has been allotted in life. I've written about it before, and I hope to write more about it in the coming months. But for the purposes at hand, I'll just say that it is all the more moving to me when it involves the youngest among us, those who in the prime of their innocence and hope find their own paths in life—sometimes more meandering by necessity, and perhaps sometimes more direct than the rest of us; distracted less, I suppose, by the trivial and mundane. And so, I've summarized two posts here tonight.

Before leaving with those two summaries, I'll end with a third. I want to say thanks to the life of Jeff Healey, who died this month at the tender age of forty-one. More than forty years earlier, Jeff lost his eyes to a rare ocular cancer. A blind toddler, Jeff went on to learn to play the guitar, starting at the age of three. Whether he was self-taught or not, I don't know, and can only guess. He learned to play famously, play well, and play uniquely—with the guitar resting flat on his lap. To me, it's one of those seemingly simple things—a thing about innocence, about hope, about chasing what you love, and about how life finds a way for itself. ( If you want to see Jeff play, here's a cover I like.)

Jeff, thanks for the music, man. And Yozzie, wherever you are, I wish you the greatest of life's joys. I pray that you find a way for yourself; a wondrous path that shines brightly and beautifully in the lives of all those you touch. Meeting you was a gift, and I love you.

I received a couple of requests to make this essay available, so here it is. I've placed it over on the writings & projects pages, but you can grab a pdf here.