Love, love, love

Today, Christmas Day, is a welcome holiday here in the United States. For many, it is a day to pause and consider the birth of Christ and its meaning in their lives. For others, it is simply a day off from work and fun time with family. For all of us, it is a welcome relief from the constant hammering of the retailers of the world to garner at least some of the comparatively few dollars spent during the gift-giving season.

For me, it is a good day to consider the phrase, "Peace on Earth, and good will to all."

My heart tells me we are entering a new world, one where consideration and compassion is the norm, not some saintly act; one where the very thought of hating anyone is much more hurtful than any slap in the face; one where all of us, every one, comes to know that, truly, we are all one.

My head tells me that my heart is full of wishful thinking, that the planet we live on is liable to cough us all up, so to speak, and be rid of this infestation known as mankind before we reach the global peace my heart sees coming.

What is to be made of a supposedly intelligent species which does crazy stuff? Example: it is in the name of our various religions that we have killed each other at a distressing rate for millennia. Sure, we kill each other for other reasons, as well, but by far the majority of organized killing in our ugly history came in the name of religion. Don't you think it is time for us to stop believing in the unspoken theory this espouses: "The murdering will continue until you come to believe in world peace?"

To me, the fault clearly lies in what we do with the words of our great spiritual leaders after they are gone. We build ceremony, declare creeds built by men on the backs of much simpler, more direct meaning of the prophet. We create hierarchies of those in charge inhabited sometimes by men of good will, and often by greedy, power-hungry men. We even allow ourselves to be called to war by these people.

It is this nature of organized religion which finally convinced me to turn away and become much less concerned with doctrine, and more about Love.

Love leads one to all sorts of happy endings, and it is the path I have chosen to follow evermore. It is the juice of life, in fact the very essence of what brings breath to our beings. Love is Life, it is as simple as that.

Love makes it easy to open one's arms to anyone, anywhere, at any moment. I don't mean holding out one arm while keeping the other hand on the hilt of your sword. No. Open arms, completely vulnerable, and therefore irresistible.

Melissa Etheridge is a singer/songwriter who has created beautiful music for decades, and for much of that time she has been open about being a lesbian. She is an impassioned supporter of equal rights for all, and for her own community of LGBT folks in particular.

This morning, I read an essay she wrote (thanks to my beautiful wife, Julia, for pointing it out to me) in which she describes her own experience with Pastor Rick Warren. For those of you who have missed the controversy surrounding Warren, welcome back to the planet. Warren was selected by Barack Obama to deliver the invocation at his inauguration next month. Warren has made some really badly worded statements about his own beliefs which have caused a storm of protest from the gay community--how dare Obama pick this hater to invoke God at the inauguration?

Not surprisingly, Melissa Etheridge had these same feelings about the Obama decision until she found herself set to appear at a Muslim leadership council at which the keynote speaker was...Rick Warren. Please read what Ms Etheridge has to say about her encounter.

I mention this example only because it is a wonderful illustration of the fallacy of the preconceived notion. If you have already decided what you believe about someone before you have the chance to meet them, what does that say about you? I don't care if you are gay or straight, fundamentalist of whatever bent or hugely progressive in your beliefs. What does it say about you if you cannot drop the prejudices and meet someone--anyone--with your own eyes clear and your arms open?

Love demands of us that we be open conduits. We are to accept Love as our own Life-giving flow, and we are to deliver that Love to the whole of the universe. All the mistakes we are making are all various means by which we block the flow of Love. It makes us ill, it causes really bad decisions, and it prevents us from opening our arms wide. If we, instead, simply allow Love to flow in, flow out, in and out, we become the amazing beings we are here to recall.

We are not here to learn about the rise and fall of various civilizations, to study how wars are fought, or to glory in the power of our own country. That's not to say those are not valid pursuits, but they are not central to our being here.

We are here to remember who we are. We are individuations of God in Earth-suits.

As more and more people remember this, we, as all of humankind together, grow closer to the image of Earth and man in cooperation with her which my heart holds so I don't forget.

Peace on Earth. Why not? Let it begin in your home, this very day. Let it spread to the neighbors with whom you seldom speak. Let it become part of you. Learn to shine the light you have become on others who need to see. Let it influence your decisions every day, every hour, every breath.

This message is what prompted me to write here for the first time in weeks. I know Love is the way, peace is the answer, and joy is where we are all headed. I'll see you on the journey, my friends!