Who Are We Anyway?
The Flame of Spirit
What do you suppose we are made of?
Do you suppose we are only flesh and blood and bone? What about mind? What about spirit?
What if I told you we are made to live and breathe and love?
What if I told you that we are designed to give and receive love endlessly? What if I told you we cannot live without some love?
What if I told you the planet lives on love? What if I told you that you could be a transmitter of love if you want to be?
What if I told you we are here to spread the love?
By now you would probably be asking me some questions. How do you know that we cannot live without some love? How do you know the planet lives on love? What is love? There are no answers to these questions, but I will share some thoughts.
Mother Love
Babies are born needing to be loved. If they are fed and clothed but are not held and cuddled, they can fail to thrive – they die. Human touch, gentle human touch releases oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel calm and loved.
It does more than that, though. It can help heal. I remember a certain winter when influenza was storming my body. My mother in law came over and took my hand and began stroking it gently and lovingly. She spoke to me kindly about the healing power of human touch. It was the turning point in my recovery. Human touch and words of love uplift the spirit. When the spirit is uplifted, the body heals more easily.
Love is forgiving.
Love is gracious.
Love is patient.
Love is kind, deeply kind I would say.
Love is giving.
Love is joyous, too.
Love is enduring.
The deepest loves are eternal.
The deepest loves are gracious and kind beyond logic.
Love is an eternal fire.
Love is a limitless ocean.
Love shows profound forbearance.
The Vineyard
How do we know our planet lives on love? Where human beings love the planet Earth, life thrives, not just human life but animal and plant life too. Where human beings love our home, we clean up the mistakes and heal the scars we have left on our planet. We see ourselves differently when we take care of and love our planet. We see ourselves as keepers of the Earth, which inspires more love.
Turning Points
Positive feedback cycles are cycles that make more of the same thing.
Love is a positive feedback cycle.
The more we love, the more love we feel.
The more love we feel, the more love we give.
The more love we give, the more love we want to give, and so on, ad infinitum.
Why does this work?
When we love, others are touched by our love.
They, in turn, love us and love others more easily.
The people they love, including us, then give more love.
The cycle is endless.
What would happen if we stopped loving the Earth? We saw the results of this in the 20th century: Pollution of the air, water, and earth; decimation of much of the world’s wildlife; decimation of many forests, including the rainforests that serve as the lungs of the planet.
We have spent the last 50 years or so figuring out how to reverse this destruction, how to best love the planet again.
It makes us better people when we love the Earth.
It helps us survive when we love the Earth.
It helps us survive because it gives us hope that our planet will not die.
Hope is not incidental. It is fundamental.
We are a species that needs hope. We need love, and we need love to achieve that hope.
We can choose to become transmitters of love by loving everyone we know as much as we can. When we do so, we help the planet thrive. We help others thrive, too.
Love is a never ending cycle of kindness, compassion, and giving. Hope is the outgrowth of love, something we feel when we are loved and when we love. That makes hope a never ending cycle as well. Hope follows the never ending cycle of kindness, compassion, and giving.
Sorrow
Depression can follow the loss of love, including its hopelessness, above and beyond the grief that one feels. Grief feels the sadness of the loss, but depression feels the hopelessness too.
Lost in the Sand
Have you ever loved somebody so much that it hurt to see them go? Most of us have. It hurts to let go of love. It hurts to think you will not have a special relationship with that person anymore. It can hurt us to our core. Sometimes that hurt becomes a hopeless feeling. Sometimes it becomes a lonely feeling. Sometimes it becomes an empty longing for love. Sometimes it becomes a feeling of devaluing of who was loved. These are the fuel of depression.
When a person is depressed, he or she is affected deeply. Depression causes people to withdraw their love. Those around her are affected by the withdrawal of her love. He or she finds it difficult to give love and compassion and caring to others in the same degree. It leaves the social network a bit shakier because there is a little less love going around. A little less positive feedback cycle is being fueled.
An influx of love from the rest of us is needed.
Since love is a positive feedback cycle that can fuel hope, a depressed person does not so easily generate hope.
An influx of hope from the rest of us is needed.
Reflections on a Lake
Planet Earth is an amazing place, as love empowers us to care for her. And when we are empowered to care for her, hope is released into the world. Hope fuels the repair work that needs to happen on our home planet. It’s a positive feedback cycle! Does the Earth love us in return? I believe it does – by providing food, air, and water; by providing building materials for dwellings to live in, work in, and play in; by providing the raw materials that get used to clothe us; by providing the biodiversity that sustains life and the beauty that nourishes our spirit. It’s a positive feedback cycle!
Human beings are a species that loves,
that feels compassion and care for others,
that generates hope,
that spreads that love to others and to the planet.
Human beings need to love and be loved and to hope.
Sweet Oceans of Love