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It is not love in the abstract that counts. Men have loved a cause as they have loved a woman. They have loved the brotherhood, the workers, the poor, the oppressed - but they have not loved [humanity]; they have not loved the least of these. They have not loved "personally." It is hard to love. It is the hardest thing in the world, naturally speaking. Have you ever read Tolstoy's Resurrection? He tells of political prisoners in a long prison train, enduring chains and persecution for the love of their brothers, ignoring those same brothers on the long trek to Siberia. It is never the brothers right next to us, but the brothers in the abstract that are easy to love - Dorothy Day
Posted by gary at January 20, 2006 10:58 PM
Love that! Well, not the practice of it, but the expression of it. It's so true. It's easy to love an impersonal cause. it's easy to love the abstract, but when it requires something of us, it is much harder. When love requires me to give of myself then it becomes real and difficult. I don't want my nice little world disturbed, but isn't that what we are called to? Not to love just when it's easy, but when it is truly difficult, that's the real measure of love. That's the measure of our committment to one another. Unfortunately I think I fail that test all too often.
Posted by: Megan at January 21, 2006 11:22 AM
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