High above his head, yet far below the sounds and lyrics of Tweedy was a banner stretched just below the ceiling. Two trite words hung together between two asterisk like stars. While the sparkling words were were no doubt a theme for someone (or some generation), they were out of tune with reality.
* Love Yourself *
You love yourself. Sad instructions for human beings that tend to hate themselves. These two words provide guidance in looking no farther than yourself for love. The two words seem to imply "You must love yourself because nobody else may." Or maybe the words were psychological instructions "you must love yourself before anyone will love you." Maybe the words were intended to be capitalistic "love yourself because its a dog eat dog world."
Is loving yourself . . .love? Love of self, while no doubt a good thing for a person to possess, may actually be out of tune with genuine love. When referring to people, love is an action or emotion or feeling towards someone else. Love that is true, genuine, lasting is a risk to loving someone who may not always love back. Love looks beyond the self to another.
There is a poetic section about love in an ancient letter written to people in Corinth. Love is something that is patient, kind, not strutting, putting up with anything, etc. In this piece, love is something I do to someone else or (if I am lucky) someone does to me. While I really need to love myself, it is an empty room of love if I never get past loving myself to loving someone else.
A good place to start with, if you are interested in loving someone else, shows up in another song. This is loving someone who already loves us. This other song that Tweedy sang last night (the same song that Wilco opened with in Fort Worth in the Fall of 2006) is Airline to Heaven. It is an odd song to come from the lips of someone in a bar, who has been an alcoholic and addicted to pain killers. But it is a song of love. Love has reached out to us. This song is a plea for us to reach out to the God who is perfect love. Read a few lines of the song and then I will challenge it to fly a little higher . . .
Airline to HeavenI enjoy this song. I appreciate the spirit of looking higher for answers. I love the Jesus, quoting Isaiah lines of encouraging us to see and hear the deeper meaning of what we are staring at and listening to.
There's an airline plane
Flies to heaven everyday
Past the pearly gates . . .
. . .Oh a lot of speakers speak
A lot of preachers preach
When you lay their salary on the line
You can hold your head and pray
It's the only earthly way
You can fly to heaven on time
Fly to heaven on time
Them's got ears, let them hear
Them's got eyes, let them see
Turn your eyes to the lord of the skies
Take that airline plane
It'll take you home again
To your home behind the skies
Your ticket you obtain
On this heavenly airline plane
You leave your sins behind
The only thing I want to encourage is that the focus be off my obtaining love and off of salvation being something that happens at the end of life. While both are true. We cannot be passive invalids, we have to obtain it. And salvation does at one level occur at the end of life.
However, this saved life begins now. You love others (and yourself) because you have been loved. We love because God first loved us. This life of love is something that saves us right now and allows us to live the saved life right now. Well, I have rambled. Much less eloquently than music. So, I will leave you with one final how-to-guide for love that comes from 1 John 4:14-21. Click, Read, and Love someone else.
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