Loving Others

 I find it easier to live with people I love.  But I am more changed for the better when I love people with whom I live.  It is easier to work with people I love but more growth takes place in me when I love the people with whom I work.  In a monastery and rectory/parish, I don’t choose the people with whom I live and work.  I used to bemoan that, but now I see they are each gifts for my own personal growth.  For one, we are all crazy with idiosyncrasies, quirks and habits built up from life events previous to coming into my life.  It is only by cooperation with grace from a power greater than myself that I am able to be loving at all.  This of course is the cutting edge of growth.  I suspect I am weird to them too.  I have learned how to keep my mouth shut at just the right time while judgments dance in my emotional life and mind.  I have learned to be helpful when I just want to leave them in their own chaos as their just punishment for their actions or inactions.  They are never changed by all this, but I am.  Are we not in this world to be loving, to be our best selves rather than change everyone else?  So these people, the bane of my existence, are really gifts in my life.  Sometimes, I have too many gifts!