The Night Is Yours

‘Vancouver At Night’ by Sutanto

To Take Or Not To Take

13 February – The pastoral text of Fr Reuter is this: Love is never rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not prone to anger. Neither does it brood over injuries. This is real love, ideal love. As human beings, can we have real love, can we achieve ideal love? I believe we could. Because it was to the Corinthians, human beings, whom St Paul was writing those words.

There are 4 sides of love there that St Paul enumerates. Love is never bad-mannered; it is always polite. Love is never selfish; it always thinks of the other. Love is never given to anger; it avoids getting mad at little things. Love never reminisces and remembers hurts; it forgives and forgets.

St Paul describes a love that is extremely difficult to have, to possess, to reach. Yet, we all need an ideal as a measure of what we have gone so far, or so near. Ideals are guiding stars that will not lead us astray even in dark and lonely nights. For we will surely have dark and lonely nights, even lonely days. If we have such love, it will sustain us.

I love this image by Sutanto because it is really a double image, with one image clear and the other image unclear. No matter that I am thousands of miles away from Vancouver. That is how life is, how love is. Is life clear? Is life unclear? It is both. You have to have faith. You take both sides. Take it, not leave it. Soak in the colors of life.