6 December 2013
I awoke this morning before 6 AM
and lay quietly, emptying my mind to see what unbidden thoughts (Quakers call
them “Leadings”) might come. The
leading that came was “Read Verse 13 in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians; consider
the role of love in your life."
Here is the familiar
1:Corinthians 13 Passage.
13 If I speak in the tongues
of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have
not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I
deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind;
love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at
wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for
prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy
in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For
now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I
shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and
love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
What do I make of this
Leading. Clearly it has something
to do with living my life, in the days, months, or years that remain to me in a
manner that includes expressing Love. Perhaps it directs my attention to further seeking about what that
might mean. Perhaps it reminds me
that I am a person of “heart” as well as “head”. I need to reflect on the fact that my gifts as a modeler and
writer (such as they are) are not an “end” but a “means to an end.”
This a day that many mourn the
passing of Nelson Mandela and celebrate the values he embodied. Not only political leaders but those
who follow the callings of public policy modeling, teaching and other academic
pursuits may also draw lessons
from Mandela – the values he professed and how he lived his life according to
those values.