The Most Excellent Way

And now I will show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13

Wild Kingdom

So there I was, minding my own business, just walking down the sidewalk outside my building, when all of a sudden, with no warning to speak of, an unusually pointy acorn rocketed past my head, mere inches from several vital sensory organs! I can’t say for sure that it had been sharpened into a point, but I’ve never seen a nut grow that way in nature.

Well, the acorn cracked on the sidewalk at such an angle and with a level of force as to preclude any possibility of accident. Following the angle at which it had flown past my noodle, I whirled around to where it must have come from to face my apparent foe and was confronted with the glassily hostile stare of a squirrel, glaring down at me from a suspiciously convenient branch.

I would have retaliated, of course, giving that squirrel what it had coming, but just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of another squirrel approaching from my left and I could hear a telltale rustle in the bush to my right. I backed slowly away down the sidewalk. Better to live to fight another day. When I got to my car I quickly got in and locked the doors. As I started to turn the car on I happened to glance out my windshield and what should confront me but the sinister gaze of another squirrel, perched calmly on the fence in front of my car. He shifted the abnormally pointy acorn he held in his tiny arms, implying the unspoken threat. His sinister eyes followed me out of the parking lot.

I wish I could say that this was the first time something like this has happened, but, unfortunately, the sidewalk outside my building bears the craterous scars of many such skirmishes. It’s almost impossible to walk down it in heels.

Philadelphia’s a tough town.