HOLY NOLA BATMAN! or how could you be so thoughtless?

Shortly before the shootings in Colorado, my friend David preached a sermon titled 'Dirty, Desperate Love' (it's really good, you should check it out) and I mentioned that I preferred the term disruptive love. But then the shootings in Aurora happened, and now I'm thinking I prefer the term thoughtless love.

 We all know about those who were killed, but two stories kind of made me cry a little. 

The first was the story two best friends, one of whom was one of the first people shot. Allie was shot in the neck and her best friend, Stephanie, dragged her out of the isle, applied pressure and refused to leave Allie. Allie told Stephanie to run, to get out, but Stephanie refused. She then helped carry Allie through two parking lots and up a hill to the nearest ambulance. These two young women were willing to give up their lives so that the other could live. That love makes sense to me, there isn't a whole lot I wouldn't do for my best friend, B.

Then there is the story of Jarell Brooks, the son of a pastor, an 18 year old who stopped thinking about him self when the shooting started. He was going to get out when he ran into a young mother and her two children, and he made a choice. He decided that he couldn't live with himself if he got out without helping them and they got hurt. So he shielded them and got shot in the process. These decisions became acts of  thoughtless love, none of these people were thinking about their own survival, they were thinking about others. 

Thankfully we are not routinely placed in situations like this, but these stories made me wonder how can we practice thoughtless love everyday? 

Currently I am reading a phenomenal book 'Zeitoun' that my site coordinator sent me (I just got it tonight, but I am half way through it) . It's a story about a Syrian immigrant, a building trades contractor who stayed in New Orleans during and after Katrina. He helped rescue people and fed his neighbor's dogs. Then he was detained, this is as far as I have gotten, but I do know this, he went back to rebuild the city he loves. See I know this because I have a really bad habit of reading the end of the book, and so I know he came back. This is an amazing kind of thoughtless love, this man could have left. His wife begged him to leave, and still he stayed because he could be useful, because he could help people. With every thing that goes horribly, horribly wrong in this world, these examples of thoughtless acts of love seem to prove that the best of who we are, the best of what we will be is not found in service to ourselves, but in service to others. And perhaps this is the answer, consistently and deliberately being kind, until kindness is our default rather than anger or fear. Perhaps then we will all thoughtlessly love one another. 

Pax, 

Elizabeth