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Acts of Love by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Feb. 20, 2012

Love

Image by The UpTake via Flickr

Love, the deepest human commitment, the force that defies empirical examination and yet is the defining and most glorious element in human life, the love between two people, between children and parents, between friends, between partners, reminds us of why we have been created for our brief sojourns on the planet. Those who cannot love—and I have seen these deformed human beings in the wars and conflicts I covered—are spiritually and emotionally dead. They affirm themselves through destruction, first of others and then, finally, of themselves. Those incapable of love never live.

“Hell,” Dostoevsky wrote, “is the inability to love.”

[…]

via Truthdig

Copyright © 2012 Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

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15 thoughts on “Acts of Love by Chris Hedges”

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  8. 2.20.12 – re: Hedges
    Bennett: The Truth Seeker did not need to believe in the human conceived idol of a jealous god, he was a high minded, free thinker and he reached for higher spheres of Thought, Action, and Understanding. Goethe was a great thinker and wrote Come, rise to higher spheres, Hedges needs to do this: Also, Hedges could not understand Christopher Hitchens. I am not one to follow Hedges limited thinking. I recommend that Hedges watch D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker at Top Documentary Films To see the video just click: Watch now… This is a one-hour documentary – awarded the Grand Prize for Best Feature Length Film at the 2011 Portland Humanist Film Festival – chronicles the life of publisher D.M. Bennett (1818-1882). D.M. Bennett was nineteenth-century America’s most controversial and unjustly imprisoned editor of the blasphemous New York City free thought periodical.

    • the human conceived idol of a jealous god

      There are many views in the Bible and one of them is this:

      Love is strong as Death
      But jealousy is cruel as the grave.

      You have to think on this to see the Truth in it.

    • Georgianne — Goethe’s Faust just like his friend and contemporary Beethoven’s 5th symphony should be taken seriously , but not the freethinking movement of that period that has cause decline in the real free thought that was exercised in the golden age of the Medieval Renaissance in Cordova Spain when the Jews , Muslims , and Catholics re-translated Aristotle under the tutalage of Archbishop Raymond. This was a period of such fusion of such high faith and reason , that Jung said that every thing after that was downhill in its dividing up clarity of thought by splitting faith and reason into categories . the culmination of that period was Aquinas masterpiece , the Summa theologica.

      When Hedges was at Harvard he studied that along with the monastic movements of the 12th century of St. Francis ,st. Hildegaard, the Trappists , etc. his breath of scope and also being a reporter for the Times in genocidal situations in the Balkans , gives him the understanding and right to write about love.

      was Bennet more controversial in his time than Ingersoll ? or for that matter H.L.Menckan ? i think not . and neither of them were as controversial in the truest as the saints and martyrs who because of their love for Christ and others suffered beyond our comprehension . that not only is truly free thought , but freedom of the deepest self .

  9. Thank you for this re-posting this wonderful commentary.

    People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centred; Forgive them anyway.
    If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
    If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway.
    If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
    What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
    f you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
    The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
    Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
    You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.

    These words of Mother Teresa are words to live by. She saw the face of Christ in societies´ rejects and ministered to him.

    Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
    And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.
    And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.
    Love suffers long, and is kind; love is not jealous; love does not boast, is not puffed up,
    Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;
    Rejoices not in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth;
    Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
    Love never fails: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
    For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
    But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be no more.
    When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
    For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
    And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

    1 Corinthians 13

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