Friends.
I’m reading this book by Marianne Williamson called “The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love” and … wowzers. If you could see my book, you would laugh. Like, REALLY laugh. I’m 114 pages in and I think I have a sticky note on every page and there are (maybe) a total of 5 words that aren’t highlighted.
HA!
This book, though? It’s challenging me. Making me kinda mad. Frustrating me. Pushing me. - all in the very best of ways.
Here’s a quote, I dare you to sit with it and ponder it before you argue with it.
“Send love to your friends, to your family, to your customers, to your clients, to your boss, to your colleagues, to your employees, to the people you know, to the people you don’t know, to your President. Send love to Nancy Pelosi and to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jesus would. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘God said I have to love my enemies. He didn’t say I have to like them.’
The world we’re living in today is saturated by a mental poison. It is more than toxic; it is hateful. And all of us know it. None of us can afford to sit out the process of doing what we can do de-escalate the madness.
And it has to start with us. With every thought we think we’re either adding to the solution or adding to the problem. Either our heart is opened or our heart is closed. There is a way to disagree, to set boundaries, even to oppose behavior that is intolerable, without withholding love. That is the message of Jesus. And it is as radical today as it was 2,000 years ago.
… The point is not that people have to change, but that we do. The work is always on ourselves. The ego is certain that a relationship will be fine as soon as the other person starts acting differently. But the fact that we can’t accept them as they are acting now is the actual problem.
It’s OK to set healthy boundaries, disagree when necessary, and hold someone else accountable. But all those things can and must be done with respect and love. When we attack another person, we’re wrong even if we’re right. The issues we are here to monitor are our own.”
Phew.
Love - love doesn’t mean that we approve of behavior. It doesn’t mean that we turn a blind eye to wrongdoing. It doesn’t mean that we brush things under the rug and pretend everything is wonderful. It doesn’t mean we have to like what everyone does, it doesn’t even mean we have to like everyone, be friends with everyone, etc.
No.
Love, instead, calls for us to look deep into the soul of every human being and remember that there is love and goodness there - even if the human being in front of us has lost touch with it.
Love calls for us to look through what someone has done and call forth who they are - by extending the same compassion to them (our neighbor) as we would have for ourselves.
Love calls us to take a breath before we respond to the most recent thing the President has said or the latest demand our boss has placed on our desk, to take a breath and either - (1) say nothing and let it pass or (2) say/do something from a place of wisdom as opposed to mere reaction.
Love call us to send light with our thoughts instead of hate - hope instead of doom, compassion instead of judgement and shame.
And yes, this kind of love is hard. It’s radical. Perhaps this is why the Way of Jesus is known as a “narrow road” that few find while many find the “wide road” that leads to destruction.
Hate?
Judgment?
Shame?
… when I log onto Facebook, I see post after post after post paving that wide road (many of my own, I admit). Posts railing against Donald Trump, railing against people who voted for Kamala Harris, fighting in the comments, accusations, judgment, shame - coming from both sides, the Right and the Left.
And so far?
Maybe I’m oblivious, but that approach and mindset doesn’t seem to have led us anywhere good as the divide continues to widen. There’s lots of boundary making, lots of disagreement … with lots of attacking and very little love, very little curiosity, very little listening, very little respect.
And so perhaps.
Maybe?
It’s time to try something different. I think Marianne is onto something here (even if I’m not yet 100% sure what it means, what it looks like, how to do it), and I’ll follow.
Much love,
Glenn || PATREON / ART STUDIO
Don't know much about Ms. Williamson, I must admit.
true about love ... it's challenging ... i just finished greg boyle's "cherished belonging," and so much of what he's saying is resonant with your post here. thanks for your work.