I saw a Facebook posting today from a man listing some of the things he loved. He ended it with, "Love is so cool!" Yeah, baby. Love is so cool!
It's even cooler when we treat it as a verb -- when we "commit random acts of love" during our day. Send somebody an e-mail telling them you love them. Take a moment to pray for all your friends or coworkers, or for the whole world! Drop a card in the mail to someone saying, thanks for being part of my life.
Every single one of these random acts of love is powerful beyond our knowing. Each one is like a stone dropped in a still pond -- it ripples out, and ripples out, and ripples out, touching so many people we can't even know.
Once, years after the incident, someone came up to me and told me something I had said to her -- one of those random acts of love -- had pulled her out of a dark place and reminded her that life was to be lived joyously. I had no idea.
Your act of love will touch one or two people, who will touch one or two people each, who will touch one or two people, and on and on it goes. Love multiplies itself.
And then it finds its way back to you. It may come in ways you would never expect, from sources you don't yet know, but it will find its way back to you in that multiplied state. That's how the Universe works. What we give, from our hearts, with no strings attached, is set free to multiply itself, to work powerfully in the world, and it returns to us. "As ye give, so shall ye be given unto." It's the truth, and it's so cool!
Put it on your Ipod, your Blackberry, your Smartphone -- an appointment to commit a random act of love each day. Love is so cool!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Jesus Has a Bad Day
I recently had a bad day: one where I forgot about my own inner spaciousness, my own divine nature. I did something that offended some other divine/human beings. I apologized and really delved into my own mistake, because I don't want to do it again. I really, really don't.
Jesus had days like that -- remember the day he cursed the fig tree so that it never bore fruit? He cursed it because it had no figs on it -- even though it was out of season for figs! And of course, he had a meltdown in the temple. Instead of responding to the money-changers with love, he became angry and turned over their tables and raised all sorts of noise and upset.
I think the point of these stories is, regardless of who we are, we have those completely human moments or days when we forget that it is all about love. Even when we are "spiritual leaders" or "fishers of men" we "fall off the pedestal" (which is a very narrow place to stand) and sometimes forget to check our words and actions with our innermost being. If we are very lucky, or if we really do want to expand spiritually, we remember to do it at some point, learn the lessons that always come with these mistakes, and next time we are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, we have a better chance of not reacting from our anger, but instead responding from love.
Can we ask more than that of others? I think we're all doing the best we can at the moment and that when we are open to learning from our mistakes we get a new "best we can" -- we learn to do better than our old "best." That's spiritual growth. Sometimes we do it in public; sometimes we do it only in the privacy of meditation. Whatever way we do it, doing it is the important thing. Isn't that why we are here?
Jesus had days like that -- remember the day he cursed the fig tree so that it never bore fruit? He cursed it because it had no figs on it -- even though it was out of season for figs! And of course, he had a meltdown in the temple. Instead of responding to the money-changers with love, he became angry and turned over their tables and raised all sorts of noise and upset.
I think the point of these stories is, regardless of who we are, we have those completely human moments or days when we forget that it is all about love. Even when we are "spiritual leaders" or "fishers of men" we "fall off the pedestal" (which is a very narrow place to stand) and sometimes forget to check our words and actions with our innermost being. If we are very lucky, or if we really do want to expand spiritually, we remember to do it at some point, learn the lessons that always come with these mistakes, and next time we are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, we have a better chance of not reacting from our anger, but instead responding from love.
Can we ask more than that of others? I think we're all doing the best we can at the moment and that when we are open to learning from our mistakes we get a new "best we can" -- we learn to do better than our old "best." That's spiritual growth. Sometimes we do it in public; sometimes we do it only in the privacy of meditation. Whatever way we do it, doing it is the important thing. Isn't that why we are here?
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