Love, Justice and a Better World

what is love?

do you know? have you felt it?

has it moved you? to dream? to be?

is your life colored by it? better for it?

and what does it have to do with service? this office?

cornel west once said, "justice is what love looks like in public."

i believe when we wish for a better world, we are implicitly wishing for a more just world - one in which justice and, therefore, peace are things as real as the breaths in our lungs, the blood in our hearts, the butterflies in our stomachs...

but what motivates justice? why do we care about treating other people fairly? especially people whom we do not know very well?

i think it is love. deep down we recognize the undeniable humanity in all of us and this dysfunctional yet beautiful family of which we are all a part... after some initial hesitation, we realize we know them better than we do ourselves sometimes. that what separates us is not something innate but rather something artificial, borders - geographic, economic - that have been drawn by our own fingers, imaginations of the world shaped by our own fears...

and so, do we dare open our hearts as wide as we do our mouths? do we really understand that we are all in it together? or otherwise lost forever?

and how much are we willing to love ourselves in order to realize that it all starts inside? that the universal and personal are inextricably bound?

how can i ever know who i am if i do not try to understand who we are?

and to make matters worse: what of those two sayings? those seemingly irreconcilable sayings?

love is not enough.

love conquers all.

both seem true enough. and, indeed, i believe both are.

but what matters at the end of the day is, perhaps, not so much the validity of these statements but rather the validity of that which you feel in your heart as supported by that which you make with your hands.

and if this is the case, then maybe it is irrelevant to ask, "what is love?" who, after all, really knows?

maybe it is more relevant to ask...

what does love do?