"I love you" while you see them hungry should mean you feed them
"I love you" while you see them thirsty should mean you give them to drink
"I love you" when you see them naked should mean you clothe them
"I love you" in the midst of all this need does not say,
"I love your hunger, I love your thirst, I love your nakedness."
It says, "I love you, and because of that,
"I hate your hunger, I hate your thirst, I hate your nakedness."
Love does not mean leaving as be, love does not mean acceptance.
Love means feeding and giving water and clothing, love means fixing.
Love means love of you and thusly a non-acceptance of their faults,
a non-acceptance of their problems and their needs,
Love means that you must give, to sit down like the Good Samaritan
and feed the destitute,
give water to the man lying down,
and offer him your coat.
Love does not mean that you wander by the homeless man and think
to yourself how wonderful that person must be and how much you appreciate
their existence and how we cannot judge others
and how each soul is worth something.
In fact, each of these truths are true but if you believe them, you have
to take them to action. If you think someone is wonderful, I do not believe you
until you help them and show them your love.
If you do not try to help and fix someone,
I do not believe you appreciate their existence.
If you do not try and help the homeless man,
I do not believe you think he is not at fault for his homelessness.
If you do not take the lost and poor and needy under your arms,
I do not believe that you believe every soul is worth something.
Love means action. Love is not words.
If love is only words, it means nothing. It is not love.
However, we know what love is- we were given a definition.
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."
Love does not leave hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and lonely.
Love is not acceptance. Love fixes. Love does.
by the way this is not a drag to anyone! I'm just addressing a really common misconception of our generation that love has to accept all faults and that unconditional love means it's never angry or dissatisfied. People our age seem to think love means you love all facets of someone. That's not true. You have to love that person for themselves and not their facets and because of that hate certain things that happen to them or certain things they do. As I've said in the poem, love doesn't mean you just let someone be whoever and whatever they want because you think they're perfect. That's irrational and in fact infatuation. True, mutual love, knows someone isn't perfect and loves them more truly because of that- but their imperfections shouldn't just be accepted- the two of you should continually work to make each other better. You shouldn't love someone FOR their flaws but love them enough to try and help each other grow past those flaws.