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)

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. A fitting day for our egg retrieval and fertilization to occur on, no?

(1 hour till we leave)

In honor of Earth Day I wanted to share with you a post made recently on one of my favorite blogs, which also happens to be written by one of my favorite people in the world.

I will allow you to read about Alwen on her site, but I am always grateful when she writes about what is happening in her life, in her heart, in her mind. She is a wonderful person and a great writer who also happens to be a mother, a student, a wife, and a friend. She has a unique way of really inhabiting her life fully and taking into account her connection to and impact on the world around her and the people in it.

In a recent post of hers, entitled "Confessions of an Everyday, Ethical Mama" she writes:

I have accepted (or am trying to) that part of being human means that we are inextricably linked to one another and to this cosmos in a way that is both beautiful and troubling. It means that we are ethically bound to seek others' best as we also seek our own because everything we do inevitably affects the world around us.

What is powerful about this post is not only the truth of the above statement, but the process she has gone through to find a way to incorporate this truth into her mothering of her daughter and the way she identifies herself as a mom.

She is thinking not only about what will make her daughter thrive, but how choices she makes as a mother, as a human being, can allow others to thrive as well.

I often have a hard time with this concept. I am easily overwhelmed by the messages that there is so much wrong with this world and the ways that we treat one another . I often feel overwhelmed by this and become paralyzed, giving up my opportunity to create change or even lessen my own negative impact on humanity and the earth because it feels too big - too much. This is not to say I do nothing. But, it does mean that even when I do something good - I am not doing it with a sense of consciousness, awareness, and love.

One of the things that is so attractive to me about my friend's post and the way she lives is that I sense an invitation to living in a place of connectivity to one another, to the earth, to life. And invitation without judgment or condescention or condemnation. And that, can be a very rare thing.

At the end of her post she writes:

But I think this desire to be aware of my connection to the pain in the world and to actively do all I can to transform that through my everyday choices is at the base of how I understand myself as a mother. It is really, really important to me to help my child see how she is linked to others in the world in joyful and in painful ways. I want to model to her the ability to make choices about living with a deep consciousness and love born from this awareness.

In writing this, she is not only inviting her daughter to a life lived with awareness and consciousness born out of love for humanity - but, I feel, she invites us all to this place. This place of asking how the choices we make affect other human beings. How we can make changes, from subtle small ones, to large life-changing ones - changes that reflect our desire to make our impact on this world a little less negative and painful and a bit more hopeful and life-giving.

And, as a bonus - she has included a list of organizations and places to shop, that she utilizes. Go check out her post - add your own organizations and tips for living more ethically.

And on this Earth Day, may you be reminded of how truly connected we are and may you feel invited to live with a greater awareness and consciousness that comes from love and respect for others who share this world with us.