Attend to love
Loving like Jesus
Just a slight change in translation of a text opens up a new range of meaning. This is true of a familiar text from John’s Gospel. Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). D. Mark Davis observes that the word “keep” is better translated as “attend”: “If you love me, you will attend to my commandments.”1
“Attend” has the connotation of paying attention with care. We may attend to something out of a sense of obligation, but more often and more readily we attend to those things that capture our attention and evoke a response. Attending requires awareness, intention, and energy. “Keep” implies observing or maintaining. Keeping a command is often about following orders based on external motivations of reward or punishment. Attending to a command is based on internal motivations of care and concern.
I think here, for example, of my marriage vows. There are times when I keep those vows, and there I times when I attend to them, and there is a clearly felt difference to me and, I’m sure, to my husband! There is going through the motions to adhere to some external set of expectations, and there is being present and engaged as an expression of the heart’s desire. I suspect we all have experienced the difference between keeping a commandment and attending to it. For many of us, it is our parents, and especially our mothers, who teach us the difference between “keeping” and “attending.”
It is important to remember what it is that Jesus commands in this context. He makes it explicit when he says a littler later, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you . . . I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” (John 15:12,17). Jesus tells us that if we love him, we will attend to loving each other. In Jesus’ teaching, it is clear that this love extends to the whole world, even to our enemies. Attending to love is the very heart of Jesus’ teaching and example.
How does Jesus’ love? His love is unrestricted, humble, and sacrificial. Jesus couples the command to attend to love with the example of washing his disciples’ feet, an act of humble service. It is expressed in his willingness to suffer death in solidarity with those who suffer injustice and cruelty. His love is unrestricted in scope – embracing all things – and unrestricted in depth – enduring all things.
Jesus’ love is also powerful. It shines a bright light on the world, illuminating both its sublime beauty and its darkest secrets. In his love, everything that is hidden is revealed, brought into the light. Genuine love has the courage to tell us the truth about ourselves. This love judges and forgives, diagnoses and heals, challenges and reconciles. It is the Spirit of truth that sets us free, makes us whole, and reunites us with the divine ground of our being.
Attend to this love, Jesus commands us; not with the caveat – “or else!” – but from the same inner conviction of the truth that Jesus shares with us: The truth that God is love and that in this love we “live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). What makes love difficult to perceive is its omnipresence. It is everywhere, and so sinks into the background of our conscious awareness. We have to attend to it, become present to it, receptive to its vitality. Instead of taking it for granted, we must strive to perceive it and become transparent to it. Attend to love.
There are many things that threaten to distract us and direct our attention away from attending to love. They all come down to fear. It is so important to be mindful of what is capturing our attention. We need to be guardians of our eyes and ears and tongues. It takes effort to keep love ever before us. Whenever we are afraid (and we will be), the antidote is always to attend to love.
Our rituals, spiritual practices, and sacraments are so many tools and reminders to attend to love. They are meant to wake us up and strengthen our capacity to pay attention to love. This is their purpose. The simplest things support our ability to attend to love. Breathe deeply. Pray. Dance. Take a walk in nature. Tend a garden. Write a letter to a friend. Listen to children playing at a park. Feel the power of the waves washing over Ocean Beach. Volunteer at a food pantry. Wash the dishes or do the laundry or any of a thousand other small ways in which we care for our families. Choose to read and listen to those who inspire us with their creativity, wisdom and courage.
Being of service to others is often the best way to get us out of ourselves and our preoccupation with our fears. Love is always relational – it reconnects us and overcomes the illusion of separation that is so often the source of our fear. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just start attending to love, wherever you are, however you can.
What our texts tell us – and, more importantly, our experience – is that the more we attend to love the more we become like Jesus. We begin to realize we know things we couldn’t possibly know. We find ourselves able to do things we never thought we could do. The deeper currents of life that previously lay beneath our awareness begin to rise to the surface and carry us to places we might otherwise never have visited. Once we begin to attend to love, it starts popping up everywhere. We may lack awareness, but there is no lack of love. We are awash in love.
One thing that rings clear in Jesus’ final message to his disciples in John’s Gospel is how very much he wants them to share his experience of union with the divine. There is this incredible thread of deep longing in Jesus for each of us to share in abundant life, to feel ourselves deeply at home in creation, rooted and grounded in love. It is this thread of longing that continues to call to us in the power of the Spirit, and leads us home to love.
Attending to love is not easy. It is courageous work. It is vulnerable work. But it is also creative work! There are so many ways to express love, to give it form, density and texture. And it is joyful work. Its satisfaction is intrinsic and immune to the vicissitudes of daily life. It endures. It cannot be taken away from us. Love just is because God is love. It is the most real thing.
As you move through the week ahead, I invite you to attend to love. What supports your attention to love? What makes you afraid? What distracts you and distorts your perception of love? What do you notice about the felt quality of life when it is centered in love? Are you focused on things that are unworthy of your attention, contrary to love? Are you loving out of obligation (not an altogether bad thing) or (even better) out of conviction? Attend to love and see what it is teaching you. You may be surprised to hear what it is saying.
https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2014/05/attending-love.html.