Who is Lovable, and Why?

For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking a lot about what it is that makes a person lovable.

Today's Old Testament lesson (Amos 6:1a, 4-7) and Gospel lesson (Luke 16: 19-31) seem to indict us not so much for our riches and luxury, but for our failure to love (Lazarus, in the New Testament, who was at the rich man's gate every day hungry and covered with sores; failure to grieve over the ruin of Joseph in Amos). We even sang a hymn promising God to "hold your people in my heart." But, as much as I might like to THINK that I mean it when I make such promises, that I can love a people or love humanity, it only takes one instance of the particular -- one person I can't love -- to trash that house of cards and prove to me that I am nowhere near that attainment. At least, I personally think that one can only meaningfully love "humanity" one person at a time -- alternatively, that the measure of how much I love "humanity" is whether I am able to love the specific example of humanity that may be on my plate an any particular moment. The Buddha, the Dali Lama, other saints may have gotten there, but I am still far away from affirming love in every instance. And yet...

I should digress to say that I am not, when I talk of love, talking about sexual or romantic attraction, or about affection based on similar interests, compatible personalities, family bonds, etc. I mean the "your neighbor as yourself" kind which really approaches the dissolving of my individual, ego-bound need into a space where the other's need, desires and priorities are equal to my own. I am nowhere near where I want to be on this capacity, and yet I do love -- often easily, sometimes surprisingly intensely.

Why are some people so easy to love and others so difficult? As the class I taught this summer came to a close I asked myself this question concerning my students. As usual, some I had come to care for very strongly. Most I felt that I had at least connected with to some degree. But a few I found it really difficult to love. I decided that whom I loved had very little to do with whether they were good students or even good people. [I teach in a men's medium security prison; it's not always a stretch to imagine why they are there, or to imagine that they may be back pretty quickly even when they finish the current sentence. They are not necessarily what society would call "good" men, but many are still eminently lovable.] It's not a matter of personableness or likability -- some of the most socially awkward and withdrawn sparked a real passion within me, and some of the most entertaining were difficult to respond to at any level of depth. While it might be a matter of need -- it's always nice to be needed and sought out for advice -- that also doesn't explain it. I loved some who needed me, but others who were entirely self-sufficient and academically so advanced that they needed me not at all, except to validate their pre-existent capability with a formal grade.

On the same question in another venue, I thought of the many speakers we heard at Chautauqua this year [I am not COMPLETELY over writing about the subject, but I think I am winding down now...], and of those who were especially memorable. Off that subset, there were a few who actually transcended memorable, and I simply loved.

A digression -- In Mark's telling of the rich young ruler visiting Jesus (Mark 10), he writes that "Jesus, looking at him, loved him." (verse 21). Hardly two sentences had passed between them (at least as Mark tells it), and Jesus just simply loved him. People slip under and around your boundaries like that sometimes, you're not looking and suddenly they are, deeply buried beneath your skin. How'd that happen?

So after pondering this all for a couple of weeks (and a lifetime, I guess), I have come to the conclusion that the essential factor in what makes people lovable, to me at least, is the amount they actually reveal who they really are. Huston Smith, in talking about the Jewish view of human nature, writes that "human beings, who on occasion so justly deserve the epiteths 'maggot and worm' (Job 25:6) are equally the beings whom God has 'crowned with glory and honor' (Psalm 8:6). There is a rabbinic saying to the effect that whenever a man or woman walks down the street, he or she is preceded by an invisible choir of angels crying, 'Make way, make way! Make way for the image of God.'"* I am reminded of this with my inmates; it's not whether they are "good" or "bad" people, whether they are trustworthy or manipulative, whether they try hard or goof off, but whether they reveal themselves to me or remain hidden behind their defenses and behind the person they want to project. Yes, that really fits! If they are open and I can understand, I can love. In a way, I can even see myself waiting and hovering around the edges of the boundaries of the people who withhold themselves from me, looking for a crack in the armor where I can catch a glimpse of the person, the "image of God," they really are.

Referring to the public speakers, I am reminded that the woman for whom I wrote speeches and presentations for 10 years was almost universally loved, despite whether we gave her good or bad material, whether she got her words crossed, knew her material thoroughly, or waxed eloquent -- or not. What she WAS was almost entirely transparent -- she could not be other other than who she is, no matter how she tried. She gave herself away to the audience (in both good and bad senses of the word, I guess), and they loved her for it. In the same way, at Chautauqua, the speakers I loved (in the above sense of the word) were just impossible not to love (I am thinking of Ken Burns and Ori Soltes, in particular), simply because they layer so much of themselves and their passion into their presentations that they transmit to the audience not so much thoughts and ideas but their own living souls. Hard NOT to respond.

So, I am left with a paradox. We all try, I especially, to present to others the person we'd like to be -- more, perhaps, than the person we are. But those projections, if I am correct in my hypothesis, are precisely what is KEEPING us from being lovable. However I try, the projection of the me I WANT you to see is flat and 2-dimensional, it leaves me dislocated from the "image of God" that is, warts and all, our birthright and nature. But, still, how scary to let that pretense go...

*Smith, H. (1991). The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. Harper Collins, New York, NY. P. 323. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (first paperback edition), Lanham, MD. p. 280-281.