Fearless
and Openhearted
“There
are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid,
we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life
has to offer with passion, excitement and acceptance...Evolution, and
all hopes for a better world, rest in the fearless and openhearted
vision of people who embrace life.”
John
Lennon
This Christmas season has
been especially difficult for me. I wonder if it has been for you,
too. I want to be positive, and hopeful, but I feel the weight of the
world's anxiety. Perhaps, if I stopped watching the news, I could be
so ignorant as to be blissful. Yet, I know that we are all connected,
and the fabric of the world soul is ripped open right now with all the
bloodshed and torment that is happening around the globe. The only
way not to feel that is to anesthetize oneself sufficiently, and that
creates its own set of problems.
We can keep John Lennon's
words, and those of many other lovers of life, clearly in the
forefront. We can choose not to fall into the trap of fear. I know a
lot of paranoid people at the moment—and honestly, I sometimes fall
into their ranks—but that will not help us move through this time
of darkness. Fear is contagious, and can take hold and turn us
against one another. I am old enough to remember the old communist
system, not to mention the Jim Crow south, in which no one knew who
was an “informer.” It created fear that separated neighbors and
families from one another. That is the sort of atmosphere that keeps
dictators in power, and makes everyone so suspicious that they don't trust even the people closest to them.
We have been through
tough times before and survived. To further quote John Lennon, “We
need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and
imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to
our ability to create.” Not to be preachy, or “Pollyanna” about
the difficult times in which we live, but it simply is not helpful to
fall into despair. We cannot afford it. We cannot create solutions,
nor address problems, if we give up on ourselves. Paraphrasing Lemony
Snicket, we are neither wicked nor noble; simply a chopped salad of
both, tossed with a dressing of confusion and conflict. In and
through all of it, we can choose to keep love in the forefront. We
are called to be those fearless and openhearted people who embrace
life.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment