February 2005 ~ Some Thoughts on Love
February, by definition, is the “love month,” with the celebration of Valentine’s Day setting the theme. February is the “love month” by another definition, as well. In the “twelve power” alignment of powers and months, we find love assigned, quite logically, to February. Centered in the heart, love is our power to attract good into our lives. Little wonder, then, that one of our favorite Unity prosperity songs begins with these words: “Love is a magnet that draws to me, riches and good without end.”
Love is central to the Unity message as it was to the message of Jesus, who, when asked to identify the most important commandment, replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37–39) Love is more than an attribute of or an adjective for God. Love is, indeed, a synonym for God: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
Norman Cousins likened love to “collagen” in the body. The disease that he was seeking to heal was described as a breakdown of collagen. He said, “I was coming unglued.” We can see the basis for his comparison in these sentences from an Internet article about collagen. “ Life is a string of complex molecules: polymers. Nature's most abundant protein polymer is collagen. More than a third of the body's protein is collagen. Collagen makes up 75% of our skin. The most important building block in the entire animal world, collagen is the tie that binds the animal kingdom together. Collagen acts as a scaffolding for our bodies and controls cell shape and differentiation. Collagen is why broken bones regenerate and wounds heal, why blood vessels grow to feed healing areas. The Collagen mesh provides the blueprint, the road map and the way.”
As I read these words I hear echoes of phrases from 1 Corinthians: 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
It has long been customary to think of love as either an emotion that is beyond our control or as a virtue that we may choose to practice. Coming to see love as a divine attribute, first of Spirit, and then of ourselves as expressions of Spirit, takes us to a deeper understanding of love as a power, love as a force that is both beyond our control and within the scope of what we may seek to demonstrate in our lives. It allows us to say, “I am love and I am loving.”
Let’s return to the “love is a magnet” idea for a moment. Whether our exposure to the concept of magnetic fields extends to university lab research or is limited to childhood play with two little magnetized dogs that either attracted or repelled each other, depending on which way we turned them, we have a basic understanding of what magnets do… they attract or repel. Love, likewise, attracts and repels. Everything that is “in” our lives right now is here because of what we love. Everything that is “not in” our lives right now is absent because of what we love, as well. How can this be? Here are two possibilities.
The things that are in my life are things that I love, desire, enjoy, and choose over other things. This precludes or repels my having other things that are contradictory to my “first love.” Example: If I love and habitually choose things that are destructive to health, I cannot have a radiant, whole body at the same time. My love for one way cancels or repels the other way. Both are an activity of love.
A larger application of the “magnet” principle is this: When we reach a place in our spiritual evolution where we surrender ourselves completely to the pure Love of God as our guide and protector, we can trust that love to draw to us only what is for our soul’s advancement and to repel from us anything that is not for our highest good. We may find that the many splendored ways of love will take us to the mountaintop and into the valley, but through it all, that love will prevail and our soul will flourish. I speak to this in the following poem.
I have loved for many reasons ~
Out of need and out of desire,
Out of duty and out of gratitude.
I have loved unwisely and too well.
I have loved sparingly and with a watchful eye.
I have loved willingly and with compassion.
Love has torn me apart,
And love has healed me.
Love has taken me outside the lines,
And love has kept me safe.
I have been shaped by the ways of love.
Perhaps this is what I came here for ~
To learn the ways of love,
To dare to be love’s vessel,
To know love’s fullness and its emptying,
And yet, to bear its name… Love.
jbm
Love is central to the Unity message as it was to the message of Jesus, who, when asked to identify the most important commandment, replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37–39) Love is more than an attribute of or an adjective for God. Love is, indeed, a synonym for God: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
Norman Cousins likened love to “collagen” in the body. The disease that he was seeking to heal was described as a breakdown of collagen. He said, “I was coming unglued.” We can see the basis for his comparison in these sentences from an Internet article about collagen. “ Life is a string of complex molecules: polymers. Nature's most abundant protein polymer is collagen. More than a third of the body's protein is collagen. Collagen makes up 75% of our skin. The most important building block in the entire animal world, collagen is the tie that binds the animal kingdom together. Collagen acts as a scaffolding for our bodies and controls cell shape and differentiation. Collagen is why broken bones regenerate and wounds heal, why blood vessels grow to feed healing areas. The Collagen mesh provides the blueprint, the road map and the way.”
As I read these words I hear echoes of phrases from 1 Corinthians: 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
It has long been customary to think of love as either an emotion that is beyond our control or as a virtue that we may choose to practice. Coming to see love as a divine attribute, first of Spirit, and then of ourselves as expressions of Spirit, takes us to a deeper understanding of love as a power, love as a force that is both beyond our control and within the scope of what we may seek to demonstrate in our lives. It allows us to say, “I am love and I am loving.”
Let’s return to the “love is a magnet” idea for a moment. Whether our exposure to the concept of magnetic fields extends to university lab research or is limited to childhood play with two little magnetized dogs that either attracted or repelled each other, depending on which way we turned them, we have a basic understanding of what magnets do… they attract or repel. Love, likewise, attracts and repels. Everything that is “in” our lives right now is here because of what we love. Everything that is “not in” our lives right now is absent because of what we love, as well. How can this be? Here are two possibilities.
The things that are in my life are things that I love, desire, enjoy, and choose over other things. This precludes or repels my having other things that are contradictory to my “first love.” Example: If I love and habitually choose things that are destructive to health, I cannot have a radiant, whole body at the same time. My love for one way cancels or repels the other way. Both are an activity of love.
A larger application of the “magnet” principle is this: When we reach a place in our spiritual evolution where we surrender ourselves completely to the pure Love of God as our guide and protector, we can trust that love to draw to us only what is for our soul’s advancement and to repel from us anything that is not for our highest good. We may find that the many splendored ways of love will take us to the mountaintop and into the valley, but through it all, that love will prevail and our soul will flourish. I speak to this in the following poem.
I have loved for many reasons ~
Out of need and out of desire,
Out of duty and out of gratitude.
I have loved unwisely and too well.
I have loved sparingly and with a watchful eye.
I have loved willingly and with compassion.
Love has torn me apart,
And love has healed me.
Love has taken me outside the lines,
And love has kept me safe.
I have been shaped by the ways of love.
Perhaps this is what I came here for ~
To learn the ways of love,
To dare to be love’s vessel,
To know love’s fullness and its emptying,
And yet, to bear its name… Love.
jbm
<< Home