Chapter 6: The Problem of Love

Just before Christmas in 1972 (I was a senior in high school and the National Football League had only recently absorbed the American Football League) an amazing thing happened. The Steelers were playing the Raiders in Pittsburgh, and losing by one point with 22 seconds remaining in the game. The Steelers had the ball, but it was fourth and 10 and they were on their own 40. Dang. No hope for these losers who had been losing for forty years.

But of course, there was a Christmas miracle of sorts. Franco Harris (a running back) caught Terry Bradshaw’s pass as it bounced backwards out of the receiver’s hands. It may have touched a defensive player before Franco Harris nabbed it. (This tidbit is only important if you care about the rules). Anyway, Harris ran for a touchdown and the Steelers won the game 13-7 after successfully scoring the extra point. In the next seven years the Steelers won four Superbowls.

I don’t love football. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But you’ve gotta love this famous story. For ten bonus points can you name it? Yes, it was the immaculate reception.

I think one can love football. I think it’s possible to love anything or anyone, except perhaps Jack Black’s performance in “King Kong”. I do not believe that the word “love” must be reserved for people. On the other hand, I think it is downright perverse to love “things” instead of people (or my golden retrievers). Possible, but perverse.

I simply believe that love has an object outside of self (I love YOU), and that it is a verb rather than a noun. Love is functioning for the well being of others. That’s what love is. I can speak with authority on this subject because I was an English major. We wrote lots of papers and read lots of words, but mostly we tried to figure out love. Well, here it is, folks: functioning for the well being of others.

I want my children to marry lovers. Authentic lovers. I already know that my children can be lovers themselves, so the match really needs to be a good one. Unfortunately for love, most young people are so self-absorbed that they can’t possibly function for the well being of another unless they are neurotic, co-dependent, or otherwise dysfunctional in the relationship department. Young people are moving through the narcissistic phase that, according to Freud at least, has to occur. Healthy people shed narcissism eventually; unhealthy people never shed it. They take hostages. They are emotional terrorists.

Also back in high school, when Franco Harris was catching a bean ball and winning the division playoff, and when I had mastered touch typing, I saw a poster. Poster art and poster philosophy were very big back then. (Actually the “art” was not art, at least not like the art one saw on posters from France. Ours were more like black-light posters of someone with an afro). Anyway, the poster I saw said, “We like someone because. We love someone although.” I thought this was pretty deep. I still do.

Father Joseph Martin, a Sulpician, says that real love is a mother gagging while changing a dirty diaper.

I like my brother for many reasons because. I also love him for some althoughs. I love him although me made me practice my times tables all the way through the twelves during our summer vacation when he discovered that I was going into the fifth grade and didn’t know them. “Everyone knows the times tables in the fourth grade,” he lied. Wandering around Lake Fanny, my great uncle’s stud farm, I recited tables to his immense satisfaction. My great uncle was named Henry, for his mother Henrietta. His brother was named Gordon. My name is Henry Gordon. My mother’s brother was named Gordon, too. I like to think that I was named for all of them.

Legend has it that a Lady Gordon of Scotland during the sixteeth century recruited her retinue of knights in a unique way. She would clench a piece of gold between her third molars. Any man who could reach it with his tongue would be accepted. This story helped me socially during college.

Uncle Gordon liked nothing better than helping me do something myself. He had the patience of Job while showing me how to tie a fishing hook, for example, on a leader. He’s dead now, but I have had a number of chilling experiences while helping a child during which I feel his presence and guiding hand.

There’s been too much written about love and sex. I think this subject may be fairly simple. Make no mistake, I do NOT think the subject of sex is simple. My point here is that the subject of love and sex is relatively understandable. How many times have we met a person who didn’t have enough money for the collection plate, but put some in anyway and, waa laa, he seems to have more money the next week? How about when you gave someone a present and they got so much joy from it that you were thrilled? Jesus said that it’s better to give than to receive. Why? What’s the motive? So you’ll feel good? Of course not. The mystery, the amazing mystery is that selfless behavior begets one blessing after another. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s real and it’s the Truth.

Of the many great paradoxes of life (and all life seems paradoxical), St. Francis said it best: it is in giving that we receive, it is pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we receive eternal life. Amen.