Love One Another or Die

The poet W.H. Auden wrote, “love one another or die.”  This seems to me to be a rather unusual message for this season but I believe it is right on point.  First, we need to be aware that Christmas is not over.  The presents may all be opened and the leftover turkey is probably down to one last turkey sandwich, but fact we are only still in the midst of the season of Christmas in the church calendar.  Sunday was the first Sunday after Christmas (Day).  We are in the twelve days of Christmas and if you go by the song, today it is the day when the songsters true love gave him (or her) six geese a laying.

If you have time on your hands you might want to figure out how many gift the true love gave to the songsters in total.  Well, in the spirit of Christmas, I won’t make you do the math, it was 364, which, as it happens, one for each day of the year minus one - I wonder which day would be the giftless one. 

Turning to where I started – as TS Eliot say, and know the place for the first time – that quote from Auden was connected to his poem September 1, 1939 as noted on https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/05/22/w-h-audens-we-must-love-one-another-or-die/ Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939“—with its obvious reference to the beginning of World War II—begins like this:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

If we believe that love came down at Christmas as the carol by Christina G. Rossetti extols, Auden’s words are all the more vital than when he wrote them.  They seem to be frighteningly prophetic about the decade just past with “clever hopes” and “a low dishonest decade”, with its “waves of anger and fear” whipped up by social media and Trumpian rallies. 

Love truly is what is needed in the coming decade or this world will truly die many deaths.  Christians are called to love one another as the one we follow declared that we are to love God and love our neighbours who are, we must remember, the despised Samaritans and not just the those who are familiar and comfortable for us to love. 

Blessings on your Christmas journey.