Gaad, I love me some Queen of All Puddings. Gooey guava sunk deep into day-old Cuban bread soaked in sweetened condensed milk and eggs and baked until bubbly. Spooned straight out of the dish, steam rising, or sliced three days later and best with a fork. Queen of All Puddings is so hardy it’ll deliciously withstand a year in the freezer and still bring a sugar-high surge after 10 seconds in the microwave.
Key West Love. It’s sunsets at Fort Zach. Sunrise on the White Street Pier. It’s clogging traffic in the grocery aisle while chatting with a friend, knowing the mail carrier’s name and all the family details. It’s holding the key of a neighbor’s home for the “just in case” times. It’s flying the Gay Pride flag next to the stars and stripes. Key West Love is consistently choosing One Human Family over “my way or the highway.”
But a deeper kind of love is a hard-work, tough-slog, often frustrating action word that demands I do things I actually don’t like to do. Real love has little to do with sunsets, Key Lime Pie or Queen of All Puddings, though I really like those things.
On Jan. 16, 2020, two months before Covid-19 changed our world, evangelist Franklin Graham brought his Sunshine State caravan to our Coffee Butler Amphitheater. For weeks before there’d been discussion about how Key West could respond to what would most certainly be divisive and discordant anti-LGBTQ messaging. Do we protest? If so, how? Do we stay away and stay silent, starving that message of oxygen?
I’m not big on the effectiveness of sign-waving protests and I was and remain conflicted about interfering with how others choose to live their faith. But doing nothing was not an option, as I wrote at the time to Larry Blackburn, one of the organizers:
“I think we as Key West would regret not making the public statement that while we support the First Amendment in all its categories, we also are, to our core, believers in One Human Family and our LGBTQ community. Let’s do this. I don’t think we can or should walk away. Franklin Graham’s message does not in any way reflect me. You have my support.”
In the end, hundreds of locals lined the sidewalks leading to the amphitheater with a simple message: Love Is Love.
Key West Love | Loving without liking
I’m embarrassed to tell a story from half a century-plus ago about times one must love without liking.
I was a West Virginia city girl whose church youth group did one of those “mission trips” helping devastatingly poor families living in the hollers. Rickety wood shacks. Outhouses. Mangy-looking dogs and skinny, snotty-nosed children in tattered, dirty clothes. Every stereotype you can conjure. And, dear heavens, did it stink.
Yuck. When I came home I showered. I righteously ranted to my mother. “Why can’t they at least be clean? I mean, how expensive is a bar of soap? What’s wrong with them? I don’t like helping people who won’t help themselves.”
Mom was silent for a long time. “Soap is cheap,” she said. “Water is hard to come by. At best they have a hand pump. Most likely they’re bringing water in buckets from the creek. And it’s cold. A daily bath is out of the question. It’s easy to like and help the lovely, Linda. There’s nothing lovely about the hardships in the hollows. Perhaps you’ve learned the difference between like and love. Love is hard.”
Love is a choice we make multiple times a day. It demands we extend our best selves to others, give voice to the voiceless, strive for justice and in all things do no less for strangers than we would do for our friends and families. Do unto others as we would have others do unto us.
A couple weeks ago my grandson Connor picked up one of those “help a child in need” Christmas gift lists. His parents and he were headed for Target to fill the requests for a 12-year-old boy when Connor simply said: “Mom, we don’t buy shoes at Target. Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you don’t want the same kinds of shoes and clothes the other kids have.” They turned around and filled a stranger’s list from Connor’s preferred store.
Connor is 12. And that was Love.
As we enter the new year, may we recognize ourselves in the strangers we meet. May we find our path, learning along the way, bending our frustrations and anger toward justice, hope, peace, joy and love.
Learn more
Everything ends. What does love require we do in the meantime?
0 Comments