Tag: #church

Your Name is Love

Your Name is Love

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 2 Comments

“Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.”  – Martin Luther King Jr.

Every weekend, Friday night and Sunday morning, I sing in the choir at my church.

There is a song by Christian artists, Evan Craft and Banda Horizonte, called Su Nombre es Amor, and I love when it comes up on our song list. My favorite part being the pre-chourus and chorus:

“Mis ojos fijaré en aquel que ya venció 
Me asombraré, mis cadenas Él rompió 

Su nombre es amor, 
Su nombre es amor, 
Jesús 
Su nombre es amor, 
Su nombre es amor, 
Jesús”

“I will fix my eyes on He who already triumphed.  I am in awe, He has broken my chains.

His name is love, His name is love,  Jesus. His name is love, His name is love, Jesus.”

We are proclaiming He is love. Because this is what we believe and this is what we know.

I’ve had love on my mind a lot lately. All kinds of love. The divine love I sing about, the familial love I feel for my family and friends, the romantic love I feel towards my boyfriend, the fraternal love for my fellow man– my neighbor.

Because I spend so much time reading about the pain and suffering my neighbors are going through, hunger, poverty, violence, homelessness, murder, depression, suicide– a laundry list of heart-wrenching pain. And I feel hopeless in my inability to help these strangers who are so far from me.

These people are in dire need of a demonstration of love. And I’m not trying to be cheesy or cliched. I’m not talking about sitting in a circle, holding hands, singing all you need is love with our eyes closed, and an acoustic guitar. I don’t mean going around saying “I love you” to everyone you see. You see words mean nothing if there isn’t any action to back it up.

Love isn’t just an abstract noun, an idea we spend a lifetime searching for. It is concrete, an action verb. We need to love. It is something we do. Love is a weapon we can bear to combat the hopelessness we feel in the world around us.

Instead of doing nothing but scrolling through headlines and feeling sad I can take a look around at the people that are within the reach of my love. Being love for them with a kind word, with an open ear, with my money, with food, with supplying a need that needs to be met. I want to be love for the people around me.

Because when everything feels like chaos, there is always one thing you can control, the way you react and the action that you take.

So choose to love.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”- Martin Luther King Jr.

Sunday School

Sunday School

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 6 Comments

In its former life, my church was an auto body shop.

It’s a huge warehouse of a building right in the heart of Humboldt Park. We’re right in front of the eastern metal Puerto Rican flag that spans across Division street.

There’s a large freight elevator inside the building that used to take cars from the first floor to the second but for the past 40 or so years has carried the congregants that we’re either too old or too young to go up and down the stairs easily.

Every service someone is stationed at the elevator to ferry to people up into the sanctuary.

For a large part of my teenage years and early 20s an older man named, Juan, manned the elevator. He was a kind man who always had a smile and a candy for you.

Usually they were Werther’s hard candies, or sometimes the ones with a chewy center.

At some point he started to forget. Where he was. Where he lived. Who people were.

He stopped coming to church. It was just him and his wife, and it was too hard for her to care for him.

My sister handed me a werther’s on Sunday and I immediately thought of him. And I remembered his small act of kindness that he offered everyone he came across; words of encouragement, a smile, and a small candy.

And I hope he at least remembered he was loved.