John Derbyshire was not enthralled with Elisabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, calling out the line

love with no need to pre-empt grievance

as confused and difficult to interpret. Derb hazards a guess

"To pre-empt" means "to seize upon to the exclusion of others: take for oneself: appropriate" (Webster's Third). So this kind of love, unlike other kinds of love, has no need to seize upon grievance and take it for itself, leaving no part of grievance over for any other love. Which kinds of love do do the thing that this kind has no need to do?

I think she rather intends the opposite.

As in: There are certain kinds of love, probably most "loves," that expect you to put your greivances aside and live together. To "pre-empt grievance" is for love to exclude greivance because love is taking up all emotional resources.

Alexander, to the contrary, wants a love that includes and makes room for her grievances.

Apparently I'm not the only one who interprets it that way, though. For example, Rinku Sen is more sanguine about the idea.

Preempting grievance means that from the beginning, there’s an understanding, spoken or tacit, that we will not speak of any harm, we will not express affront. We must not reproach, complain or resist. This is the kind of love that undergirds abusive marriages and secretive families. It gives birth to miserably tense holidays in which we carry ourselves so rigidly that we can’t eat, laugh or play tag football. This kind of non-love isn’t just a private thing.

So remember: love doesn't bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.

Love keeps a record of wrongs.

"[The Christian] finds no solid hope in the improvement of earthy conditions, or the molding of human institutions under the influence of the Golden Rule. These things indeed are to be welcomed. They may so palliate the symptoms of sin that there may be time to apply the true remedy; they may serve to produce conditions upon the earth favorable to the propagation of the gospel message; they are even valuable for their own sake. But in themselves their value, to the Christian, is certainly small. A solid building cannot be constructed when all the materials are faulty; a blessed society cannot be formed out of men who are still under the curse of sin. Human institutions are really to be molded, not by Christian principles accepted by the unsaved, but by Christian men; the true transformation of society will come by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed" - J. Gresham Machen: Christianity and Liberalism

As a side note, the mainstream of reformed thought today seems to have given up on the idea of transforming society.

Create Your Own Sea Kitten at peta.org!

I haven't done a "Who said this" in a while (I haven't blogged in a while either; I think Facebook is inadequately filling my online socializing needs for now.

Here's the quote though:

"In the state of original righteousness, man was bound to seek God...according to the tenor of the covenant of works. His seeking of God consisted in the faith and works of obedience required in that covenant. And there is now no way to seek God but according to the revelation that he has made of himself in the covenant of grace, and the terms of obedience required therein".

So who said it? (no googling...)