May 27, 2008

Hate

I am thinking of how much hatred there is in the world, of how often we resort to words and actions filled with hatred to try to change another person, to try to get our way in the world, to try to declare our stance - what we believe is right and wrong. I don't believe that this works.

I think love, the loving of another human being in a relationship, that is the only way true transformation occurs. Only then can minds and hearts be changed and differences and experiences understood. But this is not an easy task.

Just something I am pondering.

While I ponder, here are some quotes on love and hate from those much wiser than I:

Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.
-Coretta Scott King


Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.


If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
-Herman Hesse


We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

-Jonathon Swift


Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies.

Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity -- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.
-Carter Heyward


And as the priest would say at the end of the service, in the Episcopal church I attended growing up:

Go forth and love one another.


and just one more:

I may be the villain in your story....but I am a good man.
Dr. Richard Webber (Grey's Anatomy)

8 comments:

annacyclopedia said...

This is so great, Spicy! Thanks for posting all these great quotes. I can always use a refresher on setting my intention for each day in the world. I especially love this: "Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh." A wonderful reminder that love is embodied, that we need to be present to our own experience in order to be present for others.

And you grew up Episcopalian! Another reason I love you so much. My family is Anglican - it's a long story, which I will tell you sometime, but I didn't grow up in the church, but consider myself Anglican to the core. It's a mystery how it happened, but it did. So just another thing we have in common! I love discovering these things...

Antigone said...

Hate can call some of us to action though.

Phoebe said...

Hate that is acted out just makes a big mess and hurts others. But if we don't allow ourselves to feel our own hatred, we'll never be able to feel our own power or love. I think as a society, we are not taught how to stay with our own hatred without acting it out. We can't really deny feeling it, but we can control ourselves from acting it out. On the other hand, I'm all for acting out love all the time!!

Duffy said...

Thanks for all the insights ladies, they are adding lots of fuel to my pondering - giving me great things to consider. Thank you!

Lori Lavender Luz said...

This is a post I should bookmark and refer to when I'm in the hate place.

I am especially impressed that you juxtaposed Herman Hesse and Dr Richard Weber in the same piece :-).

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine you having an ounce of hate within you. You seem so filled with love and peace. I only wish I could be more like you.

Duffy said...

seeker....if only that were true. Thank you for the compliment but I certainly have my share of human and negative emotions.

I think like Phoebe said, it not simply feeling the hatred - it is what we do with it that creates pain and suffering for others. And acting on it only seems to create this perpetual circle of damage.

nancy said...

ok - time to change this. Everytime I've looked for an update for a week now - I see the word "HATE". Gotta change it hun.