All You Need is LOVE

I’m just taking a moment to think about everything I’ve learned in the past few months about social justice, and for some reason, that Beatles song lyric comes right to mind.  I know I might be a little bit “stuck in the sixties” as some might say, but I really think that the Beatles summarized a lot about the world when they sung, “love is all you need.”

After listening to Father Doyle speak on multiple occasions, and reading the texts, particularly The Irresistable Revolution, by Shane Claibourne, I’ve come down to one conclusion.  It’s all about love.  I’m not saying we all need to run around hugging our neighbors and giving high fives to everyone we meet.  I just think it has to do with a respectful and courteous kind of love.  A “treat others as you would like to be treated” kind of love.

I find this love to be most apparent in the two portions of the course that I mentioned above: Father Doyle and Shane Claibourne’s The Irresistable Revolution.  The last time I encountered Fathe Doyle was during our screening of The Camden 28, and the question and answer session that followed it.  I really feel as if Father Doyle expressed this humane, respectful form of love for all people, particularly those in Camden when he told his accounts of the actions in the draft office of the Camden 28.  He started off his response to one of the questions asked by the audience by taking the people out of Camden, out of the drugs and out of the poverty, and put them on the same playing field as the rest of the nation.  Once the disparity of Camden is wiped away, these Camden residents are just another human being.  Their need and duty to go to war is no greater than any other man who has a higher income, education, or cleaner city.  Their window of opportunity, in an idealistic sense, is no narrower than any other man’s.  Yet these are the people that go to war, becaue they feel as if it is their only way out.  Father Doyle expressed a love for these people, the downtrodden and underappreciated, as fellow members of society, and accepted them into the family of mankind.  Father Doyle also emphasized the “ripple effect”.  Father Doyle spoke of revolution as a need to stand up for love, that love for equality, and the need for change.

Shane Claibourne also expressed the need for more love amongst mankind.  I remember this most clearly in his passages about saving the homeless in different parts of Philadelphia and in his account of his trip to Calcutta to work with Mother Theresa.  In Philly, when a homeless community moved into an abandoned church, the fire department was suppose to condemn the building and deem it unsuitable for habitation.  However, men from the department came before the inspection and helped to renovate the space so that it would pass.  This kind of love should be seen more often.  The love for your neighbor, love for the man who has less than he deserves kind of love.  It’s the respect for their life that pulls compassion from our hearts and then love takes action.  In Calcutta, this love was expressed in a simple, yet powerful word: namaste.  When the paupers of India uttered this to Claibourne, he was touched, in the most sincere way.  This was love between to beings, for simply treating one another with basic respect and compassion.

So maybe I’m just listening to a little too much classic rock, but I really find a message in that simple phrase, “all you need is love.”  I don’t think giving out free hugs is going to fix the economy or instantly create world peace, but I do think just treating the people around you in the same manner that you want to be treated is a pretty good place to start.  And in my eyes, that’s love.