Who Will Love Me

If you want to know what is was like to grow up Irish in NewYork City, read, Someone, by Alice McDermott.  It is a wonderful read.  Anyhow, Marie, the woman narrator in the book is dumped by her boyfriend.  She asks an important question.  "Who will love me?"  Marriage is where many people expect this question to be answered.  Is there someone out there with whom I can share my life and diminish my loneliness?  I think this is what many of us look for in a relationship.  When I wake up in the morning I try to say thank you to God for my being loved, not only by God, but by others.  To be loved by people who actually know me in all my faults is nothing less than a miracle.  It is a profound gift, totally unearned.  People come to church with this question: "Who will love me?"  To chastise them, criticize them, tell them they are a mess, is rather cruel.  But then some say that I am a rather church lite priest.  I am an Irishman who does not believe in kicking people when they are already down.  I rather pick on religious potentates.