All love is unrequited. Even if love is returned it is not of the same nature and quality that you experience. The love is filtered and experienced through some else’s unique perspective. Informed by their parents and youth. What is returned is not what is sent. It is something different.
The important thing to remember is just because it is different doesn’t make it better or worse. It is the thing from a different perspective.
You’ve all seen the “W.W.J.D.” bracelets and T-shirts that remind teens and adults alike about a good rule of thumb for living a holy life. Many, however, ask themselves these questions: Does Journey know about my battles with the enemy of my soul? Do they understand the fierce temptations that challenge me? Do they have any clue what I am going through — the sorrow, the sadness, the depression that overflow my cup? I’ve been betrayed by a friend, a lover, someone very dear — does Journey understand?
I am here today to tell you that Journey DOES understand. Because, my friend, Journey has been there before.
SITUATION ONE: Gregg and Heather have a picture-perfect marriage. The two are young and wildly successful — Heather is a bank-credit analyst, Gregg a top loafer salesman at a department store. But Heather’s job requires her to work long hours, and Gregg often feels neglected. If she really loves me, he wonders, why is she away from home so much?
It’s the quintessential modern struggle: a two-income family, overworked, always pressed for time. You may wonder how Journey, who walked the Earth so long ago, could relate to a problem like this. But did you know that Journey faced precisely this same dilemma — nearly twenty years ago?
In Frontiers 5, 0:48, they tell the story of a musician, always on the road, and the woman he’s left behind: “They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family. But right down the line, it’s been you and me. And lovin’ a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be. Oh girl, you stand by me. I’m forever yours, faithfully.”
Faithfully. It’s clear that Journey intends a double meaning to this term: faithfulness to the absent spouse, yes, but also faith in Journey — and their power to heal broken relationships.
Devotional meditation: How secure is my faith in Journey? When is it strong? When does it falter?
SITUATION TWO: Alice loves her boyfriend, Sam, deeply. They’ve shared long conversations, walks on the beach, romantic dinners by candlelight. But now Sam is pressuring her to have sexual relations with him, and Alice doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t feel comfortable having sex before marriage, and someone has told her that Journey thinks it’s wrong.
At many points in the Albums, Journey speaks out strenuously on this subject. And their message is always the same: “Any way you want it — that’s the way you need it.” False prophets who tell you otherwise are leading you astray. Do not pay them heed.
The most striking passage on the topic comes from Departure 1, 0:50: “I was alone — I never knew — what good love could do. Then we touched, and we sang, about the lovin’ things! All night, all night — oh, every night!”
Devotional meditation: Do I love to move? Do I love to groove? Do I love the lovin’ things?
SITUATION THREE: Martin has reached the end of his rope. His happy marriage, his beautiful family, his thriving bakery — none of it means anything to him. At night he finds himself awake, alone, wondering: if all life ends in death, then what’s the point of going on with it?
Journey was no stranger to existential hunger. Escape 1, 2:02, perhaps captures this hunger best of all: “Workin’ hard to get my fill — everybody wants a thrill. Payin’ anything to roll the dice, just one more time. Some will win, some will lose — some were born to sing the blues. Oh, the movie never ends: it goes on, and on, and on, and on.”
In the face of such sorrow and hopelessness, does Journey go on to say that we should give up the fight?
NO! Instead, we are told to not stop believing. To hold on to that feeling. May the streetlight person in each of us have the courage to listen.
Devotional meditation: Have I ever stopped believing — in life, in love, in Journey? When weighed down by the cares of the world, have I let go of that feeling? Have I taken a midnight train going anywhere?
Via tedhimself
Let me ask a question because I’m not sure I fully understand. In this example the student takes 3,000 with him and leaves $3,000 behind. If it costs $6,000 to educate the student in the first school (the one that he is leaving) then it would seem that it would cost more than the $3,000 he is taking with him to educate him in the school to which he is moving. Does the extra money come from the student’s parents?
The remainder cost gets paid by someone for a secular education that is usually parents. This is how vouchers is engineered to increase the difference in education opportunity between people of various economic means.
Now if you opt for a religious education the rest is often subsidized by the church. Indoctrination at any price is a good deal for the church and getting the state to pay for some of it is gravy. This is why 90+% of vouchers go to religious organizations. An organization that actually must operate with positive cash flow from the education business ends up still being too expensive for a voucher to help unless the parents could afford to send the child to private school without the voucher.
Net effect kids with wealthy parents engaged in the education system flee the schools and leave behind the more destitute or those whose parents aren’t engaged in their education. Those whose parents aren’t wealthy enough but are engaged in the education of their child can still get out if you’re willing to sell their child’s conscience. Thus struggling public schools are left with the most destitute students and parents disengaged from the educational process.
Parental engagement is lead indicator of most signs of educational success.
–Zafkiel
“The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years.”
Falwell? Robertson? Moore? Ashcroft?
From “The Speeches of Adolph Hitler,” Vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 1942)
But luckily comparisons between the US and pre-war Germany are inappropriate.
“It’s a curious thing. As long as we’re talking about white men competing with each other, we tacitly acknowledge that we live in a realistic world of a Balzac novel, a world in which we know perfectly well that Harvard C’s beat A’s from Brooklyn College, in which family connections and a good tennis serve never hurt, and sycophancy, backstabbing and organizational inertia carry the undeserving into top jobs every day of the week. Add women and blacks into the picture, though, and suddenly the scene shifts. Now we’re in Plato’s Republic, where sternly impartial philosopher-kings award laurels to the deserving after nights of fasting and prayer. Or did, before affirmative action threw its spanner into the meritocratic works.”
- Katha Pollitt, “On the Merits”
Quite simply, morality as a product of religion is a myth.
–John Bice
Religious majority doesn’t understand atheist views, http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=14243
We are a long way from establishing anything like the Taliban in America — but not far at all from having imposed on us a version of truth that would justify the suspension of our civil liberties and other constitutional inconveniences. We won’t stone anybody to death for objecting to having their computers downloaded, or for declining to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or for skipping the “under God” addendum. But there are those who would extract a price for these breaches — and evidence that the rest of us might let them — if only for the duration of the “crisis.”
By William Raspberry
Washington Post, Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A21