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Our World Is Changed by Love

by John K. Stoner    (July 4, 2017)

Love lives in that space which is beyond the physical, which we have an inborn capacity to perceive.

In the words of Lisa Miller (THE SPIRITUAL CHILD), we have “a transcendent faculty—the ability to feel and interact with a world beyond the physical world” (p. 241).  The point of these blogs is to say that the widespread failure of humans to use that faculty for transcendence is driving us to destruction.

The point of yesterday’s blog “We Are Changed by Love” was to say that the giving and receiving of love shapes our personal experience.  We looked at that, ever so briefly, in the experience of every infant and child.   The point of today’s blog is to say that love also shapes our world.

And everything in this blog series is based on an observation and an assumption.  The observation is that our world is in very big trouble, and the assumption is that something needs to change—something in how most of us us are thinking and acting needs to change.  

Which brings us back to a question—or two— raised a couple days ago:  what is necessary, and what is possible?

What is necessary?—  some change in human behavior, in general.  And that would be a change toward caring for life instead of destroying it—starting with the inherent life-giving nature of the planet itself.  It is necessary for humans to learn and cooperate with the live-giving function of the so-called ecosystem, or in the wisdom on ancient peoples, Mother Earth.  Mother Earth, who loves us enough to give us life to begin with, and to nurture us to some kind of adult maturity.  

And it is necessary for humanity to learn to change its attitude toward all other human beings—the human occupants of and participants in the Empire and empires of economic greed and military obsession in particular must change their attitude.  The Empire that claims to be Number One, the exceptional and indispensable empire of the red, white and blue, on July 4, no less, has got to return to some kind of sanity—that is, it’s occupants and beneficiaries will either respond to their necessity of recognizing their kinship with all of humanity,  or else experience the necessity of the dire (and I warn, indescribably so) consequences of continuing on in fear and ignorance.  

This much is necessary.

What is possible?

Can we get beyond the fear of our brothers and sisters in other lands, of “other” religions, with whom we share a common destiny as if linked at the hip as Siamese twins?  And can we get beyond our ignorance of human capacities for greater goodness, both our own and that of others? 

It appears now that humanity, and the supposed leaders and people of wisdom who claim to run the worlds of economics and government, will have to entertain the possibility that the giving and receiving of human love is necessary to the running of the world.

We will have to see that not only individuals are changed and shaped by love, but the world itself is also changed and shaped by love.  And so, as strange and distant  an idea as it may seem, we’ll need to discover (again) the innate human capacity for transcendence, which includes the giving and receiving of love—that is, a simple caring for the well-being of others, not only of ourselves.

This is what is necessary.  Is it possible?  That will be the subject of ongoing discussion in these blogs.  What are human’s capable of, and what can I contribute to that?

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