By Rev. LeRoy E. Zemke
Pastor, Temple of the Living God
Abou Ben Adhem
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow man.”
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!
Taken from Gentle Thoughts by Leigh Hunt
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all embracing love.
Taken from Gentle Thoughts, compiled by Elizabeth Deane, copyright 1969, by Peter Pauper Press.
by Feodor Dostoevski
Of all the qualities innately born within us, none evokes more angst, passion, poetry, music or inspired language than the word love. From the purple passages of saints and sages and spiritual teachers around the world, ancient and modern alike, the effort to ultimately language love eludes absolute definition. Untold numbers of treatises, books, scrolls and scripture give rise to the sweeping swath of words, images and attempts to articulate love’s domain.
Yet all the language regarding love is but a fog, a mist that blankets a landscape until the warmth and brilliance of the sun reveals the environment, the mileau, the shape, shade and dimension of the environment. And then, once the sun’s light reveals the sculpted terrain, we cannot see beyond the mountain now so dramatically draped in its stunning array of multi blended, interlaced and interwoven colors! There is always so much more to see.
Risking to attempt the ineffable, I would like to express some language to a dimension of our innermost nature that ennobles, inspires, and that can ultimately transform us far beyond our human (meaning intellectual) capacity to understand. I have selected three approaches to the experience of love thus giving us a somewhat more tangible construct to consider what is often called love’s domain.
1. In sacred writings and scriptures, in the language of saints and sages, love is offered as a divine quality, as in the benevolent affection of God for all creation. This quality is revealed as existing in or is an unfolding aspect of a divine dimension, aninnate flame, or spark that exists in each incarnated soul. From this it follows that as a child of God, we can awaken to this dimensionality within us. It happens whenever we begin to reach out, affectionately, or in a caring manner to another. Affection here is not regarded as a sexual attraction or romantic linking. It is somehow, more a recognition of a deep, deep feeling that transcends race, color, creed or belief constructs. This might be thought of as the very deepest, innermost energetic bond, connection, or divine thread that issues forth from the Source of All Life.
2. The Bible speaks of us as children, sons and daughters of the Living God. If, indeed, we are children of an all powerful, omniscient, omnipresent Source, we each carry at our core self, a tiny flame or spark (energetically) of that Source within us. Just as in the human family, we each one, carry the geneticthreads called DNA, of all of our ancestors within us from birth onward.
This bond or flame can be encouraged, invited to appear, and thus expressed in our life as our unique creative work, our professional work or our capacity to love (care for) other beings, to become (potentially) a Mother Theresa (of Calcutta, India) or a Dr. Martin Luther King. The promise of this unique essence as it is available to us is in the realm of potentiality. It’s the seedof the plant awaiting its growth as an iris or a rose, or a redwood. Until the seed is placed in a proper growing medium such as ground, given special or specific nutrition, water or moisture and is offered heat, light and air along with other components of a particular environment such as dryness, coolness, etc., it remains always a seed or potential. As humans, we are “activated” bythe desire of our parents who lovingly co-create a child; nine months later, we emerge into our incarnation. But the work is not done. Parents are needed to bathe, feed, care for, hold, touch, burp and caress the child. We need a human to invite us to talk, to eat, to walk, to learn how to manage our tiny baby’s body. As we take the example further along, the influence of parents, siblings and family and all the many varied teachers is profoundly important.
Who we are to become is yet to unfold. Our uniqueness is notyet known although it’s awaiting its opportunity.
Perhaps as a child, we have a father or uncle who is a banker, financier, accountant. And at some level, we find ourselves desiring to learn all we can about money, to acquire it, to invest it, to discover how it functions; for what purpose is it used? Thus is the potentiality of the child stimulated to become a banker, or stock broker, or industrialist where ultimately in due course, after proper training, education, college studies, and specialty environments, becomes the next financial leader of a community. Potentiality now has taken form in us. Here we can see the results of certain choices and the results that unfold easily or otherwise from those choices.
Where human love is modeled in an environment such as a family of caring parents, siblings or other members of the extended family, it flowers and it grows. A mother’s response to her child is born out of respect for, appreciation of and deep regard for her offspring. (The same for a father.) The dye is cast...the potential is now awakened and needs to be allowed, encouraged and supported to flourish in the years to come.
3. The challenge to this innate sense of love or connectedness to the innate divinity occurs when we encounter hurt, pain, loss or wounding which causes us to be blocked, blinded or bound by the resistance or restriction thus encountered.
Restrictions in an incarnation occur in too many ways to list. A limited few examples follow: A child may be abandoned by one or both parents, or is born into extreme poverty, or is wounded, suffers from a physical handicap, is mentally, emotionally, or developmentally challenged or experiences life limiting physical pain. Accidents happen and the focus for the day-to-day survival of the child is overwhelming. These can be incredibly difficult patterns to consider, let alone to embrace.
And while we look for answers when a child is born with cancer, or blindness or any of many hundreds of physical and other limitations, I do believe the life thread to its sacred essence is carried within the little being, and it awaits an opportune moment tounfold. How it will unfold is really not known in the early years of the incarnation.
As adults, old and young alike, we search for some kind of meaningful answers to these dilemmas. Our response, if I dare call it such, is that in the very, very large scheme of things, the Source of All Life is still present and that a purpose exists...whether we can even begin to see it, understand it, let alone accept it.
The choice, I suspect, is to accept the specific challenge of an incarnation, to allow the unfolding of the Divine Will, the Divine Purpose to be accomplished in our life journey.
Love, already exists, in its seed essence, its potentiality, awaiting is time to flower. We often think of love as a special moment that brings a heightened state of euphoria or somekind of transcendent oneness to each of us. Or it might occur through a special relationship or the fulfillment of a long held dream, goal or set of plans.
But love, as part of our essential nature, is present from birth. Actually, I think, before birth. I tend to believe that the Source of All Life has a purposing for all creation which includes human incarnation. And while there is great mystery in the understanding of the whys and wherefores of this human life experience, I feel, deeply so, that we are called by Life to awaken and develop our essential nature.
Thus what I call love is not only the song of the siren or the lure of the lascivious. It is not the intellectualized, idealized or rarified notion of how we should be in relationship to ourselves, or to another. Rather it is the yearning of the soul to know itself, in human form, or in the brilliance of sunlight spreading its unyielding rays upon the flowering fields and barren wind swept mountain passes. It is the call of nature, the mating moose, the soaring eagles ascent to feed their youngin the family nest. It is man awakening in his nature to his weakness within, the temptation that torments and the noblest inspiration that fires him. All of this is his destiny, to know himself and allow room to change and to grow, to becomea god or goddess, a prince and/or a pauper. Once we begin to realize that we are responding to our holy self, to emerge from life shattering pain and/or a loss to behold God’s grace in another human face.... we are awakening more fully to the call of the soul’s yearning to love.
This glorious soul we must believe in. Out of that will come power. Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be, if you think your selves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be, if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches us not to think ourselves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. No matter that I have not expressed it yet, it is in me. All knowledge is in me, all power, all purity, and all freedom. Why cannot I express this knowledge? Because I do not believe in it. Let me believe in it, and it must and will come out. This is what the idea of the impersonal teaches.
Swami Vivekananda
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