Extinction chases down platonic relationships

. Best friends- everyone has or had one. Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wiveswake up- these are the roles that a lot you hold or will pursue in the future. Sure, the thought of who you will marry and where you will live, meet. dance, play, has not hit you, or maybe it has, but please do not be among the crossed with someone else. There is no way for a boy and girl to have a serious, hands down, solid friendship without crossing that line eventually or fading away completely. The platonic friendship is just the beginning stage of what I will call the friendship love. It is the most evil and torturous love of all for the one who is cursed with this desire to become more than friends with a friend.

Friend's Wedding" and "My So-called Life"? Your·platonic best friend is no different then Jules' obsession to keep her best friend single and Angela's obsessive acrossthe-street neighbor who writes her secret love letters through another boy. Though all of these characters are sincere and really do truly and whole heatedly love their best friend the ending was never a happy one for them.

Renee Di Pietro perspective editor crowd who is stuck in the most dredged of all places. This crowd would be the ones who believe in platonic relationships- the biggest scams to ever hit the earth.

Look at poor Laurie in "Little Women" who gets harshly burned for his profession of love to his best friend Jo. How much do you hate it when the platonic relationships never work out? The worst part about platonic friendships is that they are portrayed a hundred times better and faker in the movies and books. In real life, platonic friendships are on their way to extinction, and the ones left are far and few. I will give you the argument that the survival of a platonic relationship is longer than some marriages, but in the end the closeness that is shared between the two people is going to eventually cross that line of friendship or just quietly fade away when the line is information, new findings or feelings, but also have to stand by them so stubbornly that even after the person is told numerous times that the relationship is strictly only platonic, these words fall on deaf ears. The person, as if he was not present for the discussing of the impossibilities of the relationship, will continually insist with all the stubbornness of his body, that he knows better. He believes he will eventually win over the other's love by waiting and waiting and waiting until, oh, the next year when he sees another moment fit for the disclosure of his love, again.

For the unaffected friend, the rejecter or shall I say the one that is la-day-dee-la-dayda, who has no idea that there is a serious love affair going on in the head of the other, this is no big deal whether you have had your nightly chat before he or she goes to bed at night. But then that day comes and arrives like a bomb full of confusion-- the tortured one has given in to his strongest instinct-- the instinct to revel the new grown love.

This instinct to convey love and feelings to the other person in a platonic relationship is an instinct of both man and woman that can ·be described humorously by this quote by Russell Green about fate and destiny: Don't shake your head, it is the truth. There is no normal opposite sex closest of the close 'friend.' Do not believe that as you are talking back and forth on the phone that the other one is not mentally undressing you as you speak. Well no, that probably is not correct but have you ever seen "My Best

"The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it." Kenneth Grahame is all on the money with that quote except he left out a part. Humans not only have to impart their

Letter to the Editor:

"Heaven is the place where the donkey finally catches up with his carrot; hell is the eternity while he waits for it." Platonic relationships are the hell here. Once in a blue moon the road of the platonic relationship will eventually lead to the donkey catching his carrot.

What Jesus does not say about capital punishment

In the Sept 27, 2001 issue of the Loquitur, there was commentary regarding the death penalty. Read'.? ing both the commentary, and the abbreviatedremarks from three students found at the bottom of page 12, compelled me to put in words an angle on the death penalty that wasn't mentioned in the paper.

The Gospels do chronicle one instance of Jesus confronting the death penalty, in the oft-told but under-appreciatedstory of the adulteress.

A Jerusalem woman is found cheating on her husband. Per the Law of Moses, she is appropriately -.4 dragged beyond the city wall to be stoned to death. The Pharisees spy Jesus nearby, writing in the dirt. and resolve to test him. (This in itself is interesting; as if the priests already know that this rabbi of love will disapprove of the death penalty, thus giving the priests an opportunity to accuse Jesus of subversion.) They approachJesus and ask what should be done with the woman.

Jesus' famous answer is simple and anticlimactic. He says, "He who is without sin may cast the first stone."

The story is taught in Catechism and Sunday schools as an anecdote with an easy message for kids: no one is perfect, therefore we shouldn't judge anyone. And in the story it works, for the populace, clutchipg the stones they consciously selected for their part in the execution, their blood-lust surely at its peak. nevertheless feel their consciences pricked. They drop their stones and walk away, probably sulking and disappointed.

But there are deeper ramifications to this story than just a mere "nobody's perfect" moral. To me, what is most significant about this situation is not whatJesus said, but what he didn't say.

He did not say that the law was wrong.

He did not give a moral argument against capital punishment

He did not say that the priests or the people, eager to kill, were behaving sinfully.

He did not say that the woman was innocent, and indeed she was nol The people prepared to kill her were acting according to the law, and were not doing anything wrong.

But by not saying any of the above, I think Jesus in essence said this: "Yes, the woman is guilty. Yes the law says she should be stoned to death. You are right, that is the law. Now forgive her."

Forgiveher.

No other story in the Gospel more clearly exemplifies Jesus' ministry. No miracles,no raising of the dead, not even the Crucifixion, defines by example the high standard of his expectationsfor us. No other story demonstrates the depth of love he wants us to offer each other. It is all right there, in eleven short verses in John.

And the implications are bigger than anyone wants to deal with. It means that we truly forgive those who transgress againstus. It means that Fred Goldman should forgive OJ. Simpson for the murder of his son (regardless of whetheryou believe Simpson committed the murder or not; the point is, Fred Goldman believes it). It means the victims of the Sept 11 World Trade

Center tragedyshouldforgivetheir attackers. It means, incredibly,that the families wounded by Germany's actions in WWII (and my family is one of these) should forgive notjust the German people but Hitler himself. It is almost unthinkable.

Remember that Jesus was not political. He took no sides, nor rallied for any specificcause. Though he was a manwho lived every day of his thirty-three years and surely had conversations regarding war, the Roman occupationof Palestine, and the tyrannicalreign of Herod, it is important to realize that none of his opinions on these matters make it into the GospeJs. Jesus wasles.s interestedin stoppingan army from exacting bloodshed than he was in teaching each soldier in that army how to reach God.

Jesus never promised that forgiveness is easy, yet it is clear that forgivenessis what he expects from us. The story of the adul~ proves that he would never condone the death penalty. This is so clear, I wonder how so many earnest Christians can still approve of capital punishment For example, it has always disturbed me thatGeorge W. Bush, when Governor of Texas, permitted a notoriously high number of death sentences to go foiward, yet on the campaign trail stated that Jesus Christ Wa.5 his chiefrolemodel. Idon'tknowhow he can reconcile such a polarity. I suspect he has never tried.

Every book in the Bible is an exhortation for man to rise above nature. We are better than nature; we are higher than the beasts. But beasts only kill for two reasons: to eat, and in self-defense. No beast kills for revenge. Vengeance,retribution, these are attnbutes of humankind, and don't put us at a level equal with beasts but beneaththem. The opposite, of course, is forgiveness, which is also alien to beasts, and is the chief attributethat sets us above them. It is the ability to forgive that puts us closest to where Jesus wants us to be.

KureColwn Director of FinancialAid