Love - Hate

Jesus rests his case for the ultimate significance of life on the love ethic. Love is the intelligent, kindly but stern expresssion of kinship of one individual for another having as its purpose the maintenance and furtherance of life at its highest level... If we accept the basic proposition that life is one, arising out of a common center - God, all expressions of love are acts of God. Hate, then, becomes a form of annihilation of self and others, in short - suicide.  ---- Howard Thurman

This quote is so apropos to today at so many levels. We see violent extremists wanting to annihilate all they call "other," not realizing that they are actually committing spiritual suicide. We see political hatred at an all-time high. It is fascinating and terrifying watching people jump off such a cliff and going farther and farther from spiritual awakening and understanding.

Monday I had an experience of a friend who waxes loving and suddenly hateful. Periodically, she gets set off by some seemingly simple and neutral thing. I watch the dynamic in her microcosm and see the dynamic of the macrocosm. I know that the shift to love and to stay at love is an internal thing that must be made inside the heart and soul. I wonder, however, if there is a tipping point that could start the tumbling out of hate that could be applied from the outside - just to get the process of awakening to Jesus' radical love ethic started. And, I wonder if there is such a point that could apply to the macrocosm - to groups that hate. Let's consider this.

Perhaps most importantly, you and I can consciously practise Jesus' love ethic and become radical lovers of life.