How Love can transform you...

Love is not malicious or manipulative. It gives one the courage to be honest, and it does not attempt to take advantage of someone.  All of our relationships create the canvas of any given society or community.  The small everyday relationships are microcosms of the whole. When we turn on the news and the top headlines are full of death, violence, and abuse then that demonstrates a failure in our ability to love one another. I realize that the American term love is overused and sometimes oversimplified because we only have one word to mean multiple things. It describes the emotion between a mother and a child, two lovers, a tasty dessert, an amazing play, a heartfelt poem, or a passionate song. We can use the word love to describe our feelings for all the above.

                

This entry addresses the love that Desmond Tutu utilized to transform the effects of apartheid on South Africa.  “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low” (Tutu).  This takes me to the next point about forgiveness. Many of us are walking around with such heavy burdens from past hurt and disappointment that we refuse to love or simply find ourselves unable to.  All of us try our best including those who have wronged us. We owe it to ourselves to acknowledge the pain, forgive ourselves and our oppressors, and attempt to move on by sharing love one day at a time. War and revenge provide nothing but more pain, and devastation. It is easy to love when things are going swell, but the challenge is to find love when things are difficult and mired in fear. That is when true healing can begin, and we can begin to live more fully and openly.

               

“Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth” (Don Miguel Ruiz).