"We accept the love we think we deserve." - from the movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

   One of my sisters saw this movie. She didn't like the film, but loved the above line.

   Why is it that so many of us grow up thinking we don't deserve love?

   Every person's answer would be different. Mine might have something to do with being branded a bad boy as a little kid. If you're bad, then you don't deserve anything good like love, right?

   That's wrong, of course. Love is present for us all if we accept what we do is not who we are. As "bad" as we may act, we are still loved.

   How many patients are lying in hospices right now accepting love for the first time in their last moments? 

   The prisoners I prosecuted as an assistant district attorney in the 1970s chronically complained that no one had ever cared about them. The prisoner I see each week on Death Row was not only terribly mistreated as a child but lived in nineteen (19!) different homes between age seven and age fifteen (when he ran away and moved into a cardboard box.) Love is essentially irrelevant to him.

   That is one of the reasons for my weekly visits to the concrete and steel house where Glenn lives every moment of his life. Until recently, he had no other regular visitors. He had no one to affirm his basic humanity. 

   Glenn and I do no pray together because he thinks religion specifically and spirituality in general is a sham. If we had walked his life path, perhaps we would feel the same.

    I try to show up for Glenn in ways others have not. Perhaps, one day he will come to accept the love that comes not from me but through me.

   The greatest gift any caregiver can offer, whether with hands or with heart, is Love. Along with offering this gift, perhaps we can all find ways to help those we serve to open their souls to accept Love.

   Receiving Love and loving others, radically. This is the heart of life.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Tree Receiving Sun" copyright erie chapman 2012