Living in Harmony with the Universe
Face it; there are things about all of us that we share in common. They just go with being members of this species. And as we recognize and accept these things and give expression to them we live more fully. And if we don’t own and give expression to these things that define who we really are, then we engage in a very dangerous form of self-denial, the kind that involves a failure to be real, to be authentic and to make possible the best that is associated with being our kind of creation.I believe the most important of these species defining traits is our enormous capacity to love. At our core we have a power equal to all life presents us and through which we unlock the great treasures available to us. And this power is love.
I believe you and I were made, given this mysterious gift we call life by an entity, by an all-powerful being, God, self-described simply as love. And I believe we are akin to this being. In fact, I believe we are patterned after this being and that we possess the same kind of power that this One possesses. This power is love and it is at the core of our identity.
When we recognize just who we really are and when we give expression to this identity, when we exercise love in all of its many facets we thrive because we are living in harmony with who we fundamentally are.
Our greatest joys come by way of love. And yet this love, this power is one we often struggle with. And I think a lot of this struggle has to do with the reality that love has a number of intriguing facets. While it is all powerful and more than equal to any challenge we might face; while it is the source of all the true and lasting joy we find in life; while it gives us so much and makes sense of the life mystery; while all by itself it can cause our lives, no matter the trials and challenges to be well worth the living, it has its own requirements and mystery.
It sometimes requires us to take risks.
It is often counterintuitive.
It requires that we first love ourselves.
While love is our innate response to what is lovely, it also has the power to create loveliness.
I’d like to invite you to think about these facets of love; the risks it calls us to, the fact that it is sometime counterintuitive, it’s requirement that we love ourselves and it’s capacity to not only respond to loveliness but its capacity to create loveliness. And I’d like to share some stories that illustrate these facets of love and invite you in our time of discussion to do the same.
Without love and caring, there can be no good in our lives. All meaning and joy comes through the power of love. But, it is also true that loving and caring can open us to hurt and disappointment. It’s love that opens us to both the possibility for deep meaning and joy as well as the possibility of hurt and loss.
It’s instinctive not to touch that which can burn us. And while such instinct is adaptive in many settings of our lives, this instinct does not serve us well in relation to the hurt and loss that can come from our connections to others. To do well at living we must stay engaged in loving relationships. When we are hurt, when we suffer loss and feel the weight of devastating grief, we must not let fear keep us from soon returning to this all-important business of love.
Like many of us in seminary, my seminary pastor, John Claypool, while a student had served a little country church in a rural part of Kentucky. Shortly after arriving in the little community where he pastored, a couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Everyone but the new pastor knew the story of John’s and Mary’s love. But in spite of that it was told again the night of their celebration.
It seemed John and Mary were the kind of couple that just made sense. They were a natural couple, each the best of their community, doing so well in their young lives. So when they fell in love and decided to get married, it felt right to everyone.
But as the story goes a few days before their wedding was to take place a carnival came to town and Mary got swept off her feet by a smooth talking carnival worker and on impulse ran off with him, leaving John almost literally abandoned at the alter.
A few months later she returned home, pregnant, having been herself abandoned by her rouge lover. After a while John began making attempts to call on Mary but she would have none of it. As the story goes over the next five years John repeatedly reached out to Mary but her shame and guilt kept her from being receptive. John, it was said, would daily leave vegetables at her door and other things that she and her daughter might need and would often do things that were helpful in relation to Mary’s young child. He would cut and stack firewood for Mary, cut her lawn. In spite of Mary being closed to him, John tirelessly offered his love and help to Mary and her child.
One day John was standing with some others in front of the little store that served this small community. With only a few cars on the road these were still horse and buggy days in this part of Kentucky. Mary approached the little store with her young daughter in her carriage. As she did a car backfired and Mary’s horse took off. Instantly John, having an angle on the horse and carriage, leapt in front of the carriage and grabbed hold of the frightened horse. Only after being stepped on and seriously injured, John was able to bring the horse to a halt. Mary, it was said, got out of the carriage and went to John who lay injured in the road and said, “Why, John, why are you so good to me? Why do you treat me so well after what I did to you.” And John looked up and said, “Don’t you know, Mary? Don’t you know? It’s because I love you. I love you. I simply love you. I always loved you. I never stopped loving you.”
With that the crust fell from Mary’s heart and she began to talk, to be open to John’s kindness and love and one year later, six years from the day they were originally to be married John and Mary joined their hearts and lives.
If it is true that love requires a measure of risk taking on our part it is also true that love is a risk well worth taking.
Sometimes love is counterintuitive
Recently on the Life Line cable channel there was an account, a movie about the horrible tragedy that occurred in Lancaster County a few years ago. You remember a man went into an Amish schoolhouse and shot several young girls, killing many of them and then killed himself.
I have dear friends among the Amish. My love of carriages and carriage driving has involved me with many in that special community. And I know several who were personally touched by this tragedy.
I can’t say whether the movie totally accurately represented what happen on that day and the events following it but one thing, one really amazing thing the movie got right. And that is what happened the afternoon following the morning these young girls were shot. That same afternoon leaders of the Amish community, including a man whose daughter had been killed, went to the home of the shooter to express to his wife their forgiveness for what her husband had done and to also express their concern for and her and her children and to offer them their support.
Talk about counterintuitive, exercising love and its companion, forgiveness, after terrible violation goes against a lot of understandable urges. But the Amish live by a creed of love. They see love as basic to their nature and their identity. They really believe exercising love in all of its many facets, forgiveness being one of them, is the only way to respond to life events. They know something about following love not just when it is the easy and natural path but also when it’s the hard road to start out on. They know it’s the only path that can calm the storms and tragedies of life, the only path that can keep life good and meaningful.
Surrendering to anger and bitterness and letting go of love is no kind of tribute to those whose loss turns our worlds upside down. On her deathbed Lynn said to me, “You want to pay tribute to my life and our love, then get back up when my death knocks you down and go on living and loving. Life holds more goodness for you John and Mike. You want to pay tribute to me, then don’t stop loving. Don’t abandon love. Don’t let bitterness, anger, fear or any other attitude and way of living take love’s place.”
It’s natural to grieve life’s tragedies but it isn’t natural, it isn’t who we are, it isn’t our true nature to abandon love following such events.
Part of living love involves extending the power of love to ourselves. No one ever lived well who didn’t first learn something about self-love. Loving, caring for, respecting ourselves is the first step along the life path of love. Knowing something about and taking delight in how we are each marvelously made is vital if we are to live according to love. Staying in touch with our own loveliness is important.
My internship supervisor was a man named John Marquis. He had and passed on to many of us the wonderful habit of ending each day by pausing and writing on a small note card a brief account of any compliment or positive thing about himself that he had experienced or learned that day. Someone would compliment him. A stranger would smile at him and hold a door open. Acts of human kindness and consideration that touched his heart would be remembered and captured each night on a note card.
After years of doing this John had a large file of such cards. He would begin the day by taking out a few of these cards and placing them in his shirt pocket. Several times throughout the day he would take them out and let the goodness of these lessons about his loveliness and acts of kindness wash over him again and serve to strengthen his healthy self-love and connection to living according to love. It’s a wonderful learning aid and many of his students began doing the same.
We can so quickly let go of and forget those reflections of our goodness and loveliness that get extended to us by others as well as acts of human kindness we observe, while holding and remembering all too well the negative and often erroneous messages others give us along with the less than loving deeds we witness.
Finally, while love is a wonderful and natural response to that which we find lovely in life, don’t forget that love can also create loveliness. I suppose the most powerful metaphor in story form of this fact is the wonderful play Beauty and the Beast. You remember the story. Beauty’s love for Beast transformed him into all she could ever dream of. I’ve seen this story line played out over and over again in the lives of so many people. Someone’s love transformed the heart of another into someone more lovely.
And don’t you see, that is the way it is between God and us. When by some estimates we didn’t deserved it, God loved us. While we had no entitlement to it, God gave us this opportunity we call life and not only that, when we were given life, we were given the chance to make it a wonderful, supremely meaningful gift. And the way we do that is to follow the example of the One who gave life to us and that is to live love, to be love.
So, if there’s a sure fire risk, one worth taking, one that always pays off, it’s to love, to go on loving when tough times come our way, when we loose those we treasure.
And, however counterintuitive it might seem, let love guide you when things happen that cause you to consider, hate, revenge, and bitterness.
And don’t forget God loves you and wants you to love yourself. Don’t loose touch with your own loveliness.
And finally, respond to what is lovely with love but also let your love help transform what isn’t, so that it becomes lovely.
Everybody loves a love story. The good news is that we have been given the chance to be part of stories about kindness, about forgiveness, about thoughtfulness, about love. What a great gift! Claim it!
