Tell you what: Do you want to be a better person? One that's more truly, assertively, progressively loving? But above all, loving of that priceless quarry, the Sacred (preferably immigrant or refugee) Stranger???
Well, you've heard it said there's no time like the present. In the same way, there's no better place to begin than your own backyard. I.e., among those most familiar, nearest and dearest of your immediate circle. You know, precisely the ones most (understandably) apt to get on your altruistic nerves.
That being said - and assuming you're serious:
Here, at last, is one seriously big, bold, brazen, progressive, take-no-crap-from-Russia list of GLOBAL criteria, not just for recognizing Authentic Charity - besides rigorously applying it to the most devil-detailed spaces of your personal lives - but for sifting it from all the milksop lily-livered counterfeits out there. Anyhow, here goes:
(Modern) Love is . . .
Whatever, in any given opportunity for help or concern, makes you feel you've got to DO THE MOST, and make the biggest fuss (because remember, Life at its best is a strenuously busy thing). In short, whatever makes you most feel like everything depends on YOU.
Whatever makes you feel - nay, believe - that the most diligently strenuous, conscientious interference ALONE is the thing that can (1) best help any creature, and (2) best overcome any obstacle, whether "natural" or spiritual. That's right, even if your zeal-to-interfere sometimes pushes you uneasily over the borders of what an ignorant observer might call violence.
Whatever makes you feel least at peace about leaving any creature in peace. Even for a minute or two (remember, you're probably all that's keeping them safe and occupied). Any creature - whether it's your pet, or the stray cat, or your child, or parent, or spouse or significant other. Or your parishioners/congregants. Or even those otherwise stupid and worthless employees of yours whom you know you depend on, but who can't seem to do anything right by themselves.
Whatever makes you put yourself and your action, and your motives, and the purity and progress of your spiritual state, at the ABSOLUTE CENTER of whatever act of goodness you are performing. As opposed to placing your focus primarily on that creature who is the object of your good act. Or worse, on that creature's supposed "nature" and "needs" (which, in any case, one can hardly know or be sure of anyways). Remember, love is not an act of knowledge but of pure, naked WILL. By your sheer force of will you should be able to move, not just mountains, but hearts, souls, nations, productivities, profits, even genders. But if that's the case, then why should understanding - of anyone, or any thing - be any part of it? Shouldn't my sheer drive, determination, discipline, self-denial and PURITY OF INTENTION be enough to love them all effectively? Since when has love ever not been enough? And if we know it is, then what's knowledge or wisdom got to do with it?
* * * *
So what do you think? Am I (once again) grossly over-reacting, or exaggerating? Or just might that - all of the above - be the one most discouraging, most crippling handicap of the way we love today: namely, that it is all but indistinguishable from the way we work. And further - and at the risk of being a broken record (my stock in trade) - that we do both our love and our work badly, because we treat them both as if they were almost entirely the products of our own will.
But now imagine we took the prayerful time to see where our acts of charity actually come from. Yes, even those that seem most purely of our own resolve and determination.
Whatever else we might glean, I think we would know, at long last, that our charitablest acts are far more a matter of self-yielding than of self-assertion or self-conquest; of releasing and refreshing, rather than regimenting and rigidifying our souls; of a kind of childlike trust, far more than even the most fiercely grown-up decision and determination. Because if we cannot be children even before God, how do we keep from adulterating, from brutalizing, even our sternest, moralest, most determined resolutions? And if we don't ourselves know how to be needful - to be hungry - in the presence of God, how shall we ever hope to understand the needs and hungers (as opposed to the whims, wants, ambitions, resolutions, etc) of anyone else?
Pray for the peace of Kyiv.
God heal America.
(Edited.)
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