Happy Valentine's Day!
I have mixed feelings about the day, but there's one thing I know. It is far too easy to let corporate America dictate what love is to the eager masses. For weeks we have not been able to escape glossy images and advertisements about true love and how it's best expressed through material things. From jewelry to roses, we are subject to a false understanding of love and relationships.
So here are some basic dos and don'ts about the day.
Some Don'ts- Don't judge your relationships by Hollywood standards.
- Don't get swept up in what is purely a profit making machine.
- Don't get angry at your partner because they didn't get the subtle and overt messages of what you wanted for Valentine's Day.
- Don't walk around rejected and dejected because you aren't in a relationship on a day when everyone is supposed to have somebody
- Don't confuse real love and tried and true relationships with the false image that will dominate the day.
- Celebrate the people you love by letting them know you love them
- Accept what comes your way with a gracious spirit
- Realize that a partner washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen is a much more difficult way to say "I love you" than buying a cheap box of chocolates.
- Let your single friends know that they are whole people and don't need someone to complete them.
- Ponder the difference between real love and fairy tale romance
- Some reading on love and Lent and Ash Wednesday
Most of all, do realize that you are God's beloved, and nothing in the world will change that. No chocolate, no roses, no candlelight dinners can ever replace knowing that God loves you in the depths of your soul.
Valentine's Day does a great job at communicating love for one day, but it lacks the impetus or mechanism to help us do the hard work of love. And one thing required for the hard work of love is a repudiation of the very things that keep us from loving well. Ash Wednesday, with its accompanying fast, is that repudiation. - Juliet Vedral
