麻豆约拍

This has been a great month for me with a new album by Imelda May and Bob Dylan鈥檚 80th birthday (which doesn鈥檛 seem to have cheered him up at all). Then, this week one of my best bands, Crowded House, released 鈥楧reamers are Waiting鈥�. The problem with this album is that it makes me want to listen to the whole back catalogue stretching into the mid-1980s.

The title itself is evocative. Every generation needs dreamers - people who can see beyond the immediate challenges and imagine a different world in the future; people who聽聽don鈥檛 agree that we just have to accept the way the world is now, but envisages something better. And, as the album title suggests, dreamers have to have the patience to wait and work for that future, not just stamp their feet when they don鈥檛 get immediate satisfaction.

One of the songs on the album goes even deeper. 鈥楲ove isn鈥檛 hard at all鈥� is a beautiful song, but - and maybe this was the intention - the sentiment struck me as wrong. Love聽is聽hard. To love someone means to put them and their interests first. The Beatles knew that 鈥測ou can鈥檛 buy me love鈥� - it鈥檚 a relationship to be struck, not a commodity to be acquired.

Actually, the song goes on to get it right. 鈥淚t feels like love isn鈥檛 hard at all鈥� - I get that. When all is well or romance is high, loving feels easy. But, love demands more than sentiment or casual ease 鈥� as anyone who has ever loved another person knows all too well. Love is costly; love, as the Apostle Paul reminds us in a letter often read at weddings, 鈥渓ove is patient, love is kind, 鈥� is not envious or boastful or arrogant, 鈥� it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.鈥�

So, to go full circle, love lies at the heart of patient dreaming, too. Love draws us into a place of openness and vulnerability, a place where others might ridicule us or call us naive for our longing for mercy.

In other words, love hurts, but is worth the cost. So, I鈥檓 going to dream on and learn to wait.