Rev. Kei Kataoka 片岡継
Title: The taste of love
Loving someone takes a lot of time.
When I first came to the U.S., I thought it was a good culture that parents and children naturally say "I love you" to each other and give each other hugs. This is because it is possible to express one's feelings of love for one's partner in words and attitudes without feeling any sense of shame. Of course, this is not the only way to express affection, and it may become the norm and become superficial.
By the way, the Bible has the following words: "The wounds of a loving person are faithful. The wounds a lover gives are a sign of faithfulness/He who hates gives many kisses" (Proverbs 27:6). Usually we might imagine the opposite of this, that those who love give many kisses and those who hate give many wounds. But that is not all, and people are not so simple. Love itself is not just a feeling of liking or disliking. It includes, as the word says, "fidelity". In the case of married couples, adultery is a typical example of a breakdown of that fidelity. Or there is also violence. The wound here, of course, is not meant as such.
If it is the "hater" who takes love lightly and deceives with numerous kisses, then the wounds, a sign of fidelity, can be seen as an attitude of facing troublesome things together head-on. But we want and are asked to be "smart" more and more. We are also afraid of hurting and being hurt. People, including ourselves, are in some ways the most troublesome, so we try to get something that will make us forget that. Or they try to push themselves and others into a frame that they can understand. Then we explain it to them in a way that they can understand it, and they feel like they understand it too.
There is an old saying that goes, "To understand one person, you have to lick tons of salt together." You cannot eat that much salt at one time. If you do, you will get sick very quickly. It is to be tasted in small quantities, added to food. Sometimes we may use the wrong amount of salt, so that we may share the pain and suffering with others. How long does it take to use up several tons of salt? It takes that much time to understand a person. It takes patience because we cannot understand immediately, but that is why there is the depth of flavor of the love that we share together.
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