One Big Love- The Thread That Connects Us All

Hope Lives On and Love Remains

While I studied clinical psychology, I spent most of my career in an administrative capacity. When I visit, when I talk with my friends who are counselors I sometimes miss those days when I was privileged to do the kind of work they do. And when I play Walter Mitty and think about being a clinician I think I would want to specialize. I think I would want to work with those who are struggling with losses.

It’s not hard to understand why. Because many of the most powerful experiences of my life have involved loss. I loss two loves as well as other family members. I loss a lot of my physical capacity and ability as my ankle deteriorated. I loss many of my illusions about life.

In these times of financial crisis and uncertainty loss is very much in the picture. People are loosing jobs, loosing homes, loosing savings.

Over these last couple of weeks I’ve talked with several friends who have experienced financial losses akin to those experienced by my parents in the great depression. People who have had their life savings wiped out, people who are moving out of their homes as they are being foreclosed on, people loosing their jobs, people who are loosing the sense of knowing where life is taking them.

If we pay attention to it loss is always in the air. It’s always right around us touching our lives and the lives of people we know and love. And now with all of this financial upheaval the reality of loss is hitting home with greater visibility.
Because you are here you already know something about the importance of the spiritual dimension of life. You already know that the spiritual dimension is just as important as every other dimension of life. It’s just as important as the physical dimension of life. And you know that no one can do well in life without spiritual strength.

It’s obvious to most that physical well-being is an important given to doing well in life. It’s obvious that we can’t do very well at this business of living well without taking care of our physical health. Living well day to day simply requires that we maintain and nurture our physical strength. And when we get sick our reserves of physical strength serve us as we draw upon them.

But physical strength is not the only kind of strength that we need. It’s not the only kind of strength we need to draw upon, rely on as we face life challenges. It’s a certain fact that all who draw breath, all who walk the life path, all who encounter this mystery we call life will face times when they will need to make use of not only physical strength but also spiritual strength as well.

And so we nurture and build and safeguard our strength. We exercise, eat well, rest and thereby do all we can to build and maintain our physical strength. And we pray, meditate, practice love and forgiveness and come to places like this and other places to build and maintain our spiritual strength.

So that when we come upon challenges, powerful challenges like losses, we will be able to draw upon the strength to not only cope with such a challenge but also move through it in such a way that we come out on the other side stronger, more full of meaning and knowing a little more about the mystery of life.

Because of all the pervasive challenges that are confronting us; not just the world wide financial crisis, but also the wars, the ravages of illness and poverty, it isn’t hard to come upon others who are on the front lines, feeling the brunt of these challenges.

And these friends of mine who are feeling these losses right now are my kind of people because I count myself among them. I know what it means to experience big time losses. And they remind me of the most reassuring truth about this mystery we call life. And that truth is that no matter the loss, no matter how devastating the challenge, one truth, one given is unshakable and that is love remains, love always remains and for that reason hope lives on.

The other day I heard from a dear friend who lost his life savings when a company he had worked for, a company he so believed in that he had his life savings invested in the stock of this company, when this company failed and went out of business.

And later as I reflected on the conversation I had just finished with my friend. And I realized how remarkable it was that this one who had lost his job, his life savings, how remarkable it was that his spirit was good and strong. And so I started to think about that and it hit me that what was serving my friend so well in this time of challenge was his spiritual strength. He had said that after having loss all of these things that he thought were so important that he had thought his hope and spirit was resting on that he had realized that he was wrong; that his hope and spirit was not resting on theses things that can go away so quickly, that his hope and spirit was fundamentally resting on something much more basic and something that was not and could never be subject to the winds of change and that was his dear friends and the love that connected him to them and to the greater love that always endures.

And so this Colin Raye song popped into my head again. The words, so powerful set to music say:
“We are born one fine day, children of God on our way; Mama smiles, daddy cries, miracle before their eyes; they protect us till we’re of age, through it all love remains.
Boy moves on takes a bride, she stands faithful by his side; they spend years, build a home, raise a family of their own; they share joys they share pain; through it all love remains;
Kingdoms come and go but; they don’t last; Before you know the future is the past; in spite of what’s been loss or been gained, we are living proof that love remains;
I don’t know baby what I’d do on this earth without you;
We all live; we all die but the end is not good bye;
Sun comes up seasons change;
Through it all loves remains; An eternal burning flame; Hope lives on and love remains.”

And isn’t it what remains when loss takes from us; isn’t it what remains that is important. I think it is and the good news is that love always remains and because of that hope always lives on.

It really is true that by claiming, by recognizing the reality of the spiritual dimension to who you and I are that we have the greatest resource of all. We have the bail out plan of all bail out plans. We have the ultimate FDIC and SPIC plan. We have something that can always sustain our spirit because we have come to recognize the reality of and the power of love. Love is truly undefeatable. Love cannot be wiped out, can never go bankrupt, can never close its doors, can never go out of business. Love always remains. And love always leads to hope.

But love is not a passive kind of thing. Love is always an active kind of thing. We access love through action. We find love as we love, as we live mindfully not of just ourselves but of others; as we forgive ourselves and others. That’s how we draw down on the ever remaining, ever supporting, ever under girding love.

Christmas time I reminded you of the old saying “Give till it hurts.” And suggested a modification; instead saying “Give when it hurts.” Well at times of loss, at times of challenges when what was near, dear and comforting is taken from you, reach out to love which always remains and which will, no matter the loss, enable hope to live on. And the good news is that all of us can do this. All of us have access to this kind of sustaining reassurance, this kind of ultimate bail out of our spirits. Because it’s available to all who reach out for it. All who reach out in love, in forgiveness and in mindfulness.

My friend who loss so much two weeks ago told me the other day that he had been going out volunteering at a homeless shelter and that life, while uncertain in some ways that feel new, was richly full for him.

Another friend told me of how, after watching her stocks tank, she sold some of them and gave the money away. She said, “I’m going to cut my losses. I’m going to give some money away before I loose it. I’d much rather give it away than loose it.” It was her spiritual strength that enabled her to approach this crisis this way. And like all things we do out of our spiritual strength, such actions serve us well.

I have the utmost confidence in what I am telling you today; in this belief that no matter what we loose that love, a kind of love that enables hope to live on is always available to us. And one of the reasons I have this confidence is that I have seen this reality proved true over and over again. And none more powerfully than just before my Cathy died.

It was just before Thanksgiving and a large group of friends and family were gathered around the table at my house. And on that table was a spread of unbelievably good food. Cathy, just out of the hospital, was sitting at the head of the table and before we started to eat, she said that she wanted to say something. Looking out on that scene, including food of which she couldn’t eat one bite, frail, jaundiced and weak, about to die and knowing full well her condition, she said, “I want all of you to know that I consider myself the luckiest, the most fortunate woman alive. ” In her devastated state, with loss all around, she was proof positive that love remains, hope lives on.

I can’t tell you why life includes so many challenges, so many losses. The magnitude of this mystery is far beyond my comprehension. But I can tell you from first hand experience the wonderful good news that through it all love remains, hope lives on.

Dear God, we get so attached to so much that we find in life. Some we know it’s good to be attached to, the wonderful people we love and who love us, the vitality of health, just being alive. And often we confess we get attached to lots of things that are fairly silly. And when we loose these things that we get so attached to we get really scared.
We pray, we ask You to please help us reserve our greatest attachment for those parts of life where love lives. Help us please, dear God to remember that all of life is fleeting and that only love can support our spirit and keep us hopeful. And so help us please dear God to invest fully and completely in love in all of the many wonderful places we find it. For you have shown us that love always remains.
Thank you

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 and is filed under Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.