Writing Love.

Today I wrote "LOVE" on my arms. Tomorrow I will write love with my arms.

Three and a half years ago, a few friends rallied around Renee, a girl struggling with depression, addiction, and self-injury. The night before, in a moment of drug-driven hopelessness, she'd used a razor blade to emblazon "F*** UP" on her arm, feeling the pain and hopelessness of a broken life. Just a few hours later, after being rejected by the local treatment center, these friends banded together to support her until she could be accepted into a rehab center.

"We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms." [1]

Fast forward to today and To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) is a vibrant and growing non-profit, offering hope, healing, support, and encouragement to thousands of individuals who struggle with similar issues to Renee. Every so often, supporters of TWLOHA join together to etch the word "love" on their arms with sharpies and compassion, helping to raise awareness to these issues. Today was one such day.

But as I was finishing my arm artwork this morning, I was struck that we write things everyday with our arms in much less pronounced statements. We write love with our arms when we comfort a crying friend, corralling their sobbing shoulders with sinewy empathy. We write love with our arms when we stir cauldrons of boiling soup and serve them in flimsy styrofoam bowls to homeless friends who have nowhere else to turn for their daily bread (and soup). We write love with our arms when we swing hammers and dig holes, building and repairing houses for families who need a place to call home.

But we write with more than our arms.

We write love with our ears when we sit in coffee shops, listening carefully to another's story, propping our chin with love-etched arms. We write love with our feet when we run for a cause, the discipline of sweat and the sacrifice of dollars coming together in a win for every runner and supporter. We write love with our heads when we open up the doors of learning to students through tutoring in schools where there are few role models and fewer door props.

As Quakers, we are a peculiar people who have written love with our lives over the years in substantive ways. Our testimonies of equality, peace, simplicity all reek of a bold sort of love patterned for us by Christ. However, many of our practices have molded over the years and our peculiarities are less pronounced. This is not all bad. We live in an ever-changing world and an effective flow of Christ's love is hindered by an inability to change. But I hope and I try to live that we would still be utterly peculiar in the way we love people. That we would do it with such intense abandon that it would be as if it were scrawled boldly on our arms and legs and faces, obvious to all who encounter us. That the simple yet complex statement of a loving life would create a peculiar place for us in this world.

Today I write "LOVE" on my arms. Tomorrow I write love with my being.

[1] http://www.twloha.com/vision/