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| Can you find the love? |
I was all excited for our Living in Love project this month. I chose to create Valentines and to add spiritual messages of truth on them. The kind of things that people need to be reminded of.
I started to really listen and write them down. “This is gonna be great. Spirit is going to guide these messages to just the right people at the right time.” Some will go into “blessing bags” to be handed out to the homeless, some I will stick in random books in the library, I’ll sneak some into unlikely places so that some anonymous person will find them.
Talking to Kate about my project I even started to get a little choked up myself. “Sometimes people forget who they really are and they need to be reminded.” I reflected on all the people out there hurting.
Kelly Thomas, I couldn’t stop thinking about Kelly Thomas. His last moments were not filled with love and acceptance. Kelly Thomas was lying on the ground being brutally beaten by a group of Fullerton policemen as he screamed for mercy from those hired and trained to “serve and protect.”
And I started to get really mad … and all those peaceful, loving little messages that we post on Facebook and retweet on Twitter and share ad naesum started to come back to taunt me.
I know they are truth but the enormous chasm to leap to the side of unconditional love seemed so very vast.
Sometimes it’s the person who gossiped behind your back or criticized you for a very real failing that is the hardest to forgive. Sometimes it’s even the one who has been the most generous to you.
Human beings have done some horrible, horrible things thoughout the history of mankind. People have poisoned the earth, beat a homeless man, raped and killed children, committed genocide.
Can our hearts open large enough to truly forgive? To find love where we once wanted to only seek revenge, to demand justice, to make them pay for the damage they have done?
“From selfish reasons alone, if from no loftier reason, we cannot afford to find fault, to hate, or even to hold in mind anything against any living soul! The God of love cannot hear the prayer of the one who fails to love. In our meditation for friendship, let us make our unity with all people with all life”
