Clergy Corner
In Love With Love
If you have travelled to New England, perhaps you will recognize this famous pier. This is a lobster barn where lobster pots are stored and repaired. It’s just a wooden barn that sits on the end of Bradley Wharf in Rockport, MA. It was built for function not for beauty. It’s painted bright red! It has been named Motif #1. For my entire life I have known this barn as the most often painted building in America. It’s more than just a piece of local history. It’s something very special. For decades artists have set up their easels and painted watercolor or oil paintings of it, a symbol of Rockport, recognized all over the world. The salty smell of sea water permeates the air. Seagulls are noisily flying overhead. The soft sound of the ocean lapping up against the sides of the pier, make this a place one would want to set up a lawn chair and just sit for a while. But that is never done. This place is too special, almost sacred to the locals and visitors alike. It is best observed from a distance. Take as many photos as you want. Fall in love with it as so many others have.
This past Women’s #1215 Cursillo weekend, as I sat in the back of the room and watched and listened to the ladies laughing and talking and getting very serious about just what color to use to draw a poster of the last rollo they heard, a 1965 Frank Sinatra song came to my mind. He made this song one of his many signature songs. The song is “It Was A Very Good Year”. It’s a love song, but not a song about any particular girl in his life, because he sings about what it was like when his was 17 (soft summer nights on the village green), then when he was 21 (for city girls who lived up the stair), then when he was 35 (blue-blooded girls of independent means), all in all it was a very good year! The song is about being in love with love! Even at the end of the song when it’s the autumn of one’s life, like vintage wine, still, it was a very good year.
In the Bible where we find God the Father speaking about His Son, He uses the word love. “This is My Son whom I love, listen to Him.” The ladies of #1215, arrived as strangers, not knowing each other, and before the weekend was over, they were in love with each other for love’s sake.
An agape love. A love tough to explain and best understood by experience. The ladies experienced the kind of love that can only come from God. A forgiving love. An admiring love. An “it was a very good year” kind of love. A love where the weekend schedule ended up being a suggestion, yielding to what God wanted to do this weekend. Cursillo #1215 was wise. They let God do what He wanted to do! Now, He wants to do that for the rest of your life, so that when you are in the autumn of your years, you can look back as you examine your life, and sing, “It was a very good year - indeed”. Be always in love. Be the image others want to paint! God has given all of us His love, because of His infinite mercy!
God loves you and so do I!
De Colores
Rev. Jack Moody, #355 |
