Love
Love: The Creative Fire Within (video)
LOVE: The ability to attract, unify, and desire. The disciple JOHN represents unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. The month is APRIL, the corresponding color is PINK and the location is the back of the heart.
Love is a choice – a muscle to exercise. One of the first things that we must do to develop this muscle, is to learn to love ourselves. That means that we need to take care of ourselves. We need to get enough rest and sleep, enough exercise, enough nutrition and to take time to nurture our soul. We need to internalize the message that we are God’s beloved children in whom he is well pleased.
No matter what has happened or what will happen, we will never lose our value in God-mind. Whether we are dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, we are still priceless. We are still a divine idea in the mind of God. Anytime you are having feelings of less than, remember that nothing we do or don’t do will lessen our value in God’s eyes.
As we love ourselves we begin to shape our lives into something that we can love and into something that others can love. And then we no longer feel like we need love from the outside. Reverend Mary Manin-Morrisy says that “A healthy family is not a perfect family but one that strives, again and again, to put love first.
Let me tell you a story about a couple. “It was the wife’s job to keep the house in order, including provision of towels, toilet paper, and soap in the bathroom. One day she forgot to replace the soap, an oversight that her husband mentioned in an exaggerated way (‘I’ve been bathing for almost a week without any soap’), and that she vigorously denied. This argument escalated and for the next seven months they slept in separate rooms and ate in silence. Doesn’t 7 months seem like a long time to be bothered by a bar of soap? They had a choice from the very beginning to solve their problem Love is a choice. Love is always a choice. We can use that spiritual muscle or not. It’s always a choice whether to hold on to our anger and frustration, or to let it go.
Author Rita Mae Brown says, “The key to happiness is a bad memory.” When there is discord in our relationships, no matter whose ‘turn’ it is to apologize, being loving means to come forward and speak from the heart, recognizing that love can prosper and flourish in the midst of any problem.
We need to always move forward instead of pulling back, rejecting the very human reflex to turn away from the loved one who has hurt or upset us. Pulling back or striking back may feel like the right thing to do, but there is a better way. We have to go to a deeper place in ourselves and muster greater courage. If we move toward the spouse whose words stung or the child who misbehaved, the payoff is always there. We find a love that would not have shown itself in any other way.
Move from Love to Loving. The Bible tells us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. We can ask ourselves: Am I a selective doer? Do I practice love with one person but not another? Am I a fair-weather doer, loving others when it’s easy, but not when I’m inconvenienced? If we let love be our guide, we learn to do that which we thought impossible and we love those who are hardest to love. The most difficult person to love is a reflection of you.
When we ask ourselves, who is the most difficult person-not considering ourselves – for us to love in our life right now, we can recognize that person as God’s gift to us. Because if we examine ourselves, we will find that what we dislike in them is just a reflection of something we need to look at in ourselves. As God’s gift to us, they represent an opportunity for our soul to change – for our soul to develop deeper capacities of loving.
Extend love without condition. I Corinthians 13:6,7 says that “Love believes the best” about someone else. When we are inclined to mistrust and suspect someone, our faculty of love calls us to look for the positive intention instead. When we seek the good we will find it.
Loving unconditionally with no ‘ifs or buts’ is what we are called to do. That is essence of the New Testament teachings. The essence of what all the great teachers have taught, including Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa. As we flex our capacity to love and to be loving, we will find prejudices to overcome. We will find people who challenge us. Our mission is to love them. We don’t have to understand them or even approve of some behaviors; we just need to remember to love and to be loving.
What did Mahatma Gandhi have that transformed an empire? What did Martin Luther King, Jr. have that transformed a nation? And what is it you and I have that can transform the world? They had Soul Force, a belief that no force can overpower love in action. Our souls, too, can be trained as an agent for change as we develop our ability to love, to be loved, and to be loving.
The everlasting truth is that what really matters, is the love we give, the love we receive, and the love we leave. Today, tell someone that you love them. Do something loving. Let us join together in love, so that we can proclaim that this is a spiritual community that love is building.