1) God is God. If you expect a person to treat you like god, you are the maker of a bondage from which that person will be delivered, shaking the locusts off their feet on the way out the door.
2) Don’t make idols — not of someone you love or your family or some future you plan. An idol doesn’t grow, doesn’t change. No one wants to be an idol.
3) Don’t make a wrongful use of the word “love,” defining the way you love as good and the loves of others as wrong. God is Love and becomes angry with anyone who builds a wall.
4) There is a holiness to Valentine’s Day. Be tender with those sad on this day — grieving a person who has died or a relationship broken, feeling wounded like no other day with loneliness. Sit with these people and be at rest. Remember to make the paper heart for everyone in the class.
5) Honor and remember those who have shown you how to love by how they lived their lives. Tell them that they have done so, and, if they are not living, tell a story about their love to at least one other person today, so these memories will influence others for a long, long time.
6) You shall not kill the joy that someone takes in a box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers. You shall not kill the self-love of any of God’s children by body shaming. You shall not kill.
7) You shall not abuse the trust that anyone places in you.
8) You shall not steal hope from a child, dignity from a teen, emotional space from a person in middle age, memory … and the possibility of new romance from an elder.
9) You shall not lie on an online dating app. You may swallow your opinion about someone’s favorite recipe, new clothing, hair style, ink, or piercing.
10) You shall not covet anything someone else has, but you can long for anything and believe you will receive it … a home of kindness, a partner of gentleness, a new friend, a companion animal of some kind that brings joy to your life (even a bird in the sky or a pesky squirrel hanging off the feeder), and, most of all, the ability to be a loving neighbor for anyone who needs one.
love these, especially #10
Thank you and yes — turning coveting inside out from “wanting someone else’s to believing you can have …” is so hard and so important.
Thank you, Maren. I’m still struck by #1. How often do I make an idol of myself, and insist that others worship it/me?
Wow. I am more likely to make idols of someone else — expect them to have the answers to not be fallible and then — disappointed (of course) blame them for being human.
You have a generous heart. I am… accustomed to privilege, shall we say?
That’s not actually my experience of you, my friend.