Reader Beware: the following probably constitutes a rant, and a rambling rant at that!
I received an email today from a professional acquaintance about the ruling in Los Angeles that upheld a private school's right to expel two students on suspicion that they were lesbian. It made me crazy. It haunted me all day long. I ranted about it to my boss. I posted about it in Twitter, and tried to post about it on Facebook but was blocked by a message that some users found the content "abusive." Uh, hello, the expulsion was abusive! Not being able to discuss it or post a story about it is just plain censorship. But I digress.
Awhile later, I read a post by my lovely, wise friend Mary Ruth who asserts that love is the motivation for all actions, even hateful ones.
Upon more measured consideration, I realize the court was saying that there is no law against a school expelling students who may be exhibiting behavior, or in this case are suspected of exhibiting behavior, that runs counter to its religious teachings and foundation. The court is NOT necessarily saying that the school's actions were honorable, correct, ethical, or moral. The court was upholding its obligation, its love, for the law as it currently stands in the state of California.
So my anger is misdirected if I aim it at the court.
Which leaves the school as my remaining target. What love motivated them to remove these two young girls based on one student's testimony that one of the girls told the other she loved her? Isn't one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity "Love thy neighbor?" Yet this school chose to judge this expression of love as inappropriate--you can't love her because that would constitute a transgression against another part of the Christian teaching that further defines which of your neighbors you are allowed to love in which ways. So what love was the school operating under when it removed these two friends? The love of a principle? The love of a God and his rules? The love of its student body as a whole and a fear that it would be harmed by the presence of these two? The love, or approval, of the student body's parents who pay tuition and allow the school to operate? Probably one or a combination of these. And, yet, in serving that perhaps "larger" love, that intangible love, they failed to show concrete love and compassion for the two individual girls who were perceived to somehow pose a threat to their community. The example they set teaches students to judge and fear, to place conformity to a principle above respect and compassion for the individual, to operate from a place of assumed authority rather than from a place of equality and awareness of shared humanity.
Which is why I love the Sanskrit word Namaste so much. Ram Dass has translated it to mean: "I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light, and of peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, We are One."
And this is what I believe, that we are one. That love is everything. That we are here to learn how to feel love, to express love, to aspire to expand ourselves and our awareness to the extent that we are able to act from a place of love in every moment. Not to fear love, define love, judge love, cling to love, but to be love.
These girls, in my opinion and from my far removed perspective, were being love and were punished for that. Rather than being praised for being open and expressing true emotion, they were removed from their peer group. The message to all young people: be careful to whom you express love, be careful about how you express love, close down rather than opening up, love can hurt you, love has rules and boundaries and exploring those boundaries is forbidden, and most importantly, be afraid of who you are. In a society that has produced movies with titles like Mean Girls and where bullying is a regular part of growing up, we should be celebrating friends who actually like each other and express that openly, not kicking them out of school.
Which brings me to my own life. I have been hurt and embarrassed as a result of expressing love--sometimes I've chosen the "wrong" person or the wrong time or the wrong words--but I've always tried to respect myself for having had the courage to offer that love, regardless of how it was received. Believe me, this is what got me through my teen years and early adulthood! Luckily, now I'm married and I only have all the other love issues to navigate.
But even now, I find occasions where, in hindsight, I worry that in interactions with friends or acquaintances (or sometimes complete strangers!) I may have gushed too much, said something a little too outrageous, been a little too "me." I especially find this with electronic communication. I will jump onto a friend's Facebook page and leave what I believe to be a complimentary comment, and then feel stupid and embarrassed and wish I'd just kept my thoughts to myself. In cyberspace you don't always get instant feedback to your "interactions" and often you don't get any feedback at all. It is so easy for someone who cares what others think to interpret silence as rejection, to imagine the other person laughing - or worse - at her expense. And sometimes these experiences will cause me to withdraw from interactions for extended periods of time, until somehow I forget that I'm socially inept and jump back in to make some new inappropriate remark.
But lately, like in the last 48 hours, I've decided to stop being embarrassed and worried about how others perceive me. As long as I am operating from a place of love and a place of authenticity, I have nothing to be embarrassed of. I am putting my full self, for better or worse, into the world. Maybe that self is a dork, but she's a loving, supportive dork!
