Scattered Love Thoughts

Filed Under from the heart, love, people, quotes

Sometimes I worry that I’m not tough enough to do battle with the negative energies of the world. When I’m afraid, I try to steel myself against future uncertainties, all the while fretting, “Can I take it, will I stand it?” It’s hard to shake the feeling that my optimism must be temporary, that I just haven’t faced anything truly hard yet.

Is toughness what it takes to survive? Can I put my spirit in an uncrushable cage?

These days, whenever I start thinking about how to keep things from going bad or going sour or getting away, another voice asks: why are you trying to “keep” anything?

In his sermon On Being a Good Neighbor, Martin Luther King, Jr. recounts the parable of the good Samaritan. After rescuing an injured man from a dangerous road, cleaning his wounds and taking him to an inn for further care, the good Samaritan gives money to the innskeeper and says, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.” King says that the good Samaritan exceeded all rules regarding coming to the aid of a stranger. “His love was complete.” This made me think of all the boundaries I have placed - and let others place - around my love. I know my love is not complete.

I keep thinking about capital punishment. I can’t help but feel it isn’t right, even if some people seem to deserve to die. King writes that capital punishment is society’s “final assertion that it will not forgive.”

Next month is the late William Stafford’s birthday, and there will be a series of events in Portland to commemorate this. I read Every War Has Two Losers about a year ago and ever since then I’ve been slowly contemplating pacifism somewhere in the back of my mind. So many years, I’d been learning from a variety of sources that one must master others. Through economic power, brute force or wit - somehow, one must be able to gain control over your enemies. Then I read this line by Stafford, on dominating others in conversation:

Those times you caught them out and showed them up - they learned how stupid they are. But now you’ll never hear the little song of their purring throats, and you’ll never know what they think, when you say hello.

I want to live like this: open hearted; but I’m not ready to claim pacifism just yet. Part of me still resists it, but it seems to be a natural extension of what King calls “excessive altruism,” and of loving without boundaries.

I took a break from some people and some activities in order to stop taking myself so seriously and to have more breathing room. I’m learning how to temper my emotional reactions to people - remembering that they have no power over me, and that the reverse is true. So far, I am the happiest I’ve been since I was a child. And nothing has really changed but my own mind.

(photo by HSA: El Mirador aka “The Viewpoint”, Guatemala 2005)

Comments

5 Responses to “Scattered Love Thoughts”

ratchtaphol on December 27th, 2005 9:59 pm

oh! write very good..
Braidwood on December 27th, 2005 11:25 pm

Wow, what a beautiful post. That quote was really touching. I can be so open hearted with animals, and I can understand that quote completely in regards to animals. I learned as a little girl that to keep the full spirit of an animal, you have to be completely gentle. I often don’t think about that with humans because I get scared and I want people to love me so I go about it by trying to get them to think I’m better than them? hmmm… Thank you for such a beautiful post.
PeaceBang on December 28th, 2005 7:33 pm

oh geez, and there I am writing over at PeaceBang about how I want to hold BTK’s head under water. *sigh*
Thanks for more good things to think about, and for reminding me how much I love that sermon of Dr. King’s.
Wally Nut on December 29th, 2005 9:07 pm

I do believe that the time of polarities is quickly diminishing. I say this fully aware that the extremes are alive and well and seem to be increasing in intensity, but I believe this is the last of the old energy asserting its power. We no longer have to fight the darkness, but simply immerse ourselves in the light that transends all polarities. Please hold on to what you know, that “they” do not have power over you. Your spirit is real and you can stretch to any height you desire when necessary to remind yourself that no one has power over you, ever, no one. Such a knowledge does not really require a toughness of the kind you allude to. It requires a soul confidence. It is the confidence of Mahatma Ghandi who turns to his assailant and acknowledges the divine in him. This kind of soul confidnece is now available to all of us. We are all Mahatma. We all have Buddha nature. We all have Christ consciousness within our hearts.
LaReinaCobre on January 1st, 2006 2:11 am

Good thoughts, thank you all.

Wally - wow; very powerful words of encouragement and faith. These have been in my head for several days now.