THE ASTERISK AND ATTACHED STRINGS

COUNTING BLESSINGS.

Is CYA a real thing in the lawyer lexicon? I gave it a Google and sure enough, in a website of the "California Lawyers Association" I found an article about C-ingYA.

Does everything come with "Terms and Conditions"? You know: small-print? Is the asterisk the emoji for Caveat Emptor, which is translated: buyer beware?

If I send you a note like this in the midst of a rough time in your life: "I'm sending you thoughts and prayers.*" Do you assume there might be a footnote with some terms and conditions at the bottom of the page; something like: *This is mainly sentiment and does not constitute any promise of concrete support or action on my part. The offer is good as long as your situation is fresh on my mind.

I'm in the throes of finding a Medicare plan for My Amazing-Missus and myself. Maybe you've noticed the ads on TV. If you haven't, then your TV hasn't been on. Imagine trekking a path that for seniors should be clear, wide, flat, true, honest and well-lit; but instead it's winding and full of forks. There are roots growing into the path that trip you up. There are moss-covered rocks to make you slip and fall, and old signs nailed to trees with rusty spikes warning you to beware, because once you choose a plan, there's no turning back. The path is strewn with old people murmuring about regret over choosing an "advantage" plan or the wrong "medi-gap" plan. There is a place along the path called the "donut hole" which sounds delightful, but apparently is dreadful. I don't know what it is or how to avoid it, and the only answers seems to be embedded in the small-print that old eyes can't read.

But, this isn't really a post about all that malaise. This is about searching instead for something that comes freely and in full measure; WITHOUT CONDITION. In others words: unconditional, no asterisks.

That's risky business though. No lawyer, no politician, no business person is going to enter into any contract without a page or a hundred of CYA small-print. Do those Terms and Conditions come from a lack of trust? Maybe they come from hard lessons-learned. Maybe we're all just a little too jaded, bruised and burned to go into anything unconditionally.

My sage and beloved friend, Doug Manning, tells of a Justice of the Peace that would start each wedding ceremony at his courthouse with these questions to the bride and groom:

"So, you want to become ONE!?"

"I have a question for you: which one?" The point being that there's got to be some give and some receive from both.

I highly and strongly recommend you read a little book by C.S. Lewis called The Four Loves, which are affection (storge), friendship (phileo), romantic (eros) and charity (agape), which is unconditional love.

Speaking as one who is and has been loved unconditionally, with more than 50 years of marriage in the books, the answer to the Justice's question is: a relationship that includes all four of Lewis's ingredients will create a ONE that is born from both persons.

It is a journey though; a quest, a voyage--becoming friends, becoming lovers, becoming a team to take on the quagmire of stuff like medicare, to be there for one another for better or for worse. It's love in spite of, because of, not: love if... A relationship isn't a contract with terms and conditions. That doesn't mean it isn't without risks and hurts. Lewis offers this small-print:

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." --C.S. Lewis.

This Thanksgiving season I am grateful for unconditional love. I'm thinking and praying that I can do better at giving and making as I am at taking.*

*As the small-print in the home internet brochures say, upload and download speeds may vary. When it comes to love, grace and peace I tend to upload a lot faster than I download. Just so you know.