FROM THE BOUNDARY

The power of love – Part 3

Occasionally you meet someone whom you know instinctively is very special. You just feel that their hearts are good and true, that compassion speaks when they speak. I met such a person yesterday as I entered the supermarket, a lady selling tickets in support of the Cancer Society.
Bless all those who give their time for causes like that. She spoke to me softly as a mother would to her child and, after I’d bought a couple of tickets, leaned forward gently and caringly advised me to keep my fluffy-face purse resting in my shoulder bag rather than let it hang loose as I do routinely. I thought about her as I trekked the shelves and realised that of course she was quite right, and not least because it took the pressure off the bag strap and helped stop the purse from unzipping. When I left, I told her what I’d done and thanked her. She smiled the smile of Wisdom itself and that was that. For me, she was Mother Mary, Chenrezig in Tibetan Buddhism. She had a rare quality which she was able to transmit to me, a stranger. Do you divine what it was? Her presence was a blessing. Do you know anyone like that?

Most of us, I suspect, know that in some way we’re incomplete, that something’s missing from our lives, from US. Think of it as a treasure or a key. We probably don’t know what it is, though we might sense we once had it but that somehow it’s gone leaving only an empty throne in our hearts. Or it may be that in life’s passage it’s simply got smothered, so that we never really lost it though we’re at a loss to say what it is or that we once had it. Maybe we’ve been searching for it, but then if we don’t know what it is how can we expect to find it? You may think it’s a search for truth or, more likely, God. But if we can’t say we once had these things, or knew these things, how can we say we’ve been separated from them or recognise them if we come across them?

There’s “an empty throne in our hearts”. Well, of course, I mean love. It’s love that’s gone missing or been smothered. Only find or rediscover it and we’ve come to God-ness. With God-ness there are neither strangers nor aliens. Our doors are open. The whole world is ours for living. With love, we’re awake again and joy comes. The king and the beggar are one. There are no bowed heads. It’s the wide-eyed-ness and spontaneous smile of the child, the child who nestles his head in your lap.

Without it, we breathe insecurity and fear. Our prayers spawn from stony ground. We’re ever on guard. We put our trust in gadgets, in wealth, in security, in looking back, in copying, in hoarding, in rules, in book texts, in ethnicity, in dress codes, in habits, even in the pursuit of ‘excellence’ which demonstrates, we’re yawningly told, how superior we are or are meant to be – just like them. They’re prison bars. No wonder we seek release, and search and search, supposing from our heart’s incessant whisper that what was once ours, whatever it was, has gone or was never there.

It’s a delusion. Of course it’s there. It never left us. It was there when we were little kids, when we trusted spontaneously, when we hadn’t been trained to fear, to be suspicious, to be ever on sentry duty, to ‘mature’, to ‘achieve’, to see God as an old man with a big stick. So many things have knocked love unconscious – the AWOL dad (where WERE you? – yes, but he lost love), the mum who spends more time on her smart phone than with you (they’re everywhere – where ARE you? – yes, but then she’s ‘lost’ love too), the absence of the language of love, the threats of this or that, all the doing-as-you’re-told – from teachers, pastors, ‘big-wigs’ at graduations, all the ‘important’ people - with nothing and no-one to lift you up, to laugh and share with you, to tell you how precious you are, to tell you how much you’re loved. Why wouldn’t you think that love had gone? Education, society, culture, religion are all responsible in their different ways.

What to do? Listen for your heartbeat. It tells you you’re alive, YOU, someone who’s infinitely precious. Listen for your inner voice. It says ‘I love you. Don’t be afraid.’ Understand that love begins with kindness, with sacrifice, with compassion. Don’t kill the spider. Put it outside to live too. Show compassion to yourself when you do silly things, for you are your own child. When you pass a beggar, if nothing else bless him silently – for he’s infinitely precious too. Ask yourself how you can contribute to new life, the life that you seek. Hold the world as if it’s your newborn. It’s a start. And know that with the resurrection of love, you begin to see the face of God – YOU with GOD, the God who never left you and never will.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Searching from the boundary: “Look, and see where the root is: happiness shall be yours when you come to the root” (Kabir).

Barbados Advocate

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