LETTER: Enmity is a word

Editor,

“Father, please.” Those were the first words I could think of to even begin to stop the pounding in my heart right now. Who are these people I once knew and claimed to be of? What are these words that they use? Tolerate, diminish, right, sanctity, ideal, force, ruin, ban, fidelity, bond, separate, debase, deviant, regime, wrong, perversion, unnatural, us, them.

I knew a story, once long ago when I was young. I didn’t understand it then, when I was young. I tried hard to see the symbolism of words and imagery. I wanted to understand so that perhaps I might discover the secret, the secret to the riddle.

There was a tree, a river, a path. There were people. There was a building, elevated in the air, lifted up, filled with fine things. Filled with people wearing fine things. There was laughing, mocking, scorn, separation.

There was fruit, there was goodness, there was a multitude of potential, there were mysteries.

The story helps me understand now. And I still partake amidst your scorn.

The opposite of love is not hate – it is indifference. You cannot love what you do not try to know or understand. The opposite of hate is not love – it is tolerance.

I don’t recall in my youth, although I could be misled where Jesus ever said “hate” in regards to how best we should treat each other. I do recall pain, sacrifice, a going beneath all mankind. I do recall an invitation to partake, to love, to follow, to be one.

Jill Henderson