All We Need Is Love
“We need to deliberately move into the field and lavish love on those incapable of loving. To me, that’s the magic.”
A friend of mine was called to testify on behalf of a young man he was working with who was a gang member. My friend said that, as he took the witness stand, he felt a wave of well-being sweep over him. He was so filled with love and equanimity that he found himself smiling. In fact, he just sat there, beaming. As the prosecutor approached the witness stand to cross-examine him, he, too, began to smile. The more they smiled at each other, the more they kept smiling. After a few minutes, the prosecutor simply turned away (still smiling) and my friend went back to his seat without having uttered a word.
Sometimes I think of this story as I read the maddening headlines, feeling overwhelmed by outrage and frustration. I am particularly snarly about racists, evangelicals and government officials who use their religion to justify cruelty and greed. It's always a shock to recognize that my own default response to poor leadership is to sneer, to judge, to seethe. To turn away.
In those moments, it helps to take the long view: We are in a time of transition, one that many of us have been waiting for, and working toward, most of our lives. Joanna Macy calls it the Great Turning. We who are alive now have a role to play in ushering in a way of relating that is infused with generosity and love.
My cousin's wife is battling cancer. He marvels at the depth of love that they have for each other - the mysterious expansion of the heart that has come with facing the unrelenting presence of death. Perhaps this is a microcosm, an intensification, of where we all find ourselves these days. Love and Death travel together.
Recently, sitting in my cousin's patio, talking about our political despair, the conversation shifted to how toxic it felt to carry around so much turmoil. As we talked, we started to notice a subtle presence, like a river flowing in our midst. Like we could just step into it and float. Let it wash over us. Learn to breathe inside of it. Our voices grew soft as we marvelled at how palpable Love felt right then, and how available it was. We imagined slipping out of our shackles and into a state of authentic tenderness toward everyone and everything.
My cousin said, Can you do it? Can you flip the switch? Let's see. I thought, Yes! And for a moment, it seemed so natural and easy, like I could totally do it. Like stepping off a curb. But the next moment I felt hesitant and embarrassed, and suddenly unequal to the task. That's how it suddenly felt: like a task, and I began to shrink away from it, just a little. I felt a wisp of uncertainty and tamped down the energy, feeling disappointed with myself.
I heard again the words of my friend, Sam, whose comment about love is at the beginning of this post. He was talking about the civil war in Liberia, and the reasons that people hurt each other: Marginalization. Hopelessness. Feeling unloved. Trauma and loss. He told of a visit to a base where hundreds of child soldiers were being held against their will and forced to fight. At first, the children were unruly and refused to listen to him. He said, I began to share with them about humanity, about themselves, about what has been lost and how they've been fragmented. The room went quiet. Sam and the children talked for another three hours. By the time he left, the kids were crying, begging him to stay with them. Even when they allowed us to go, a couple of miles away from them but still in sight, they kept waving.
I think about Sam's stories, and see that this is love in action: the painstaking work of listening and speaking in a way that shows people that they are worthy of being loved and that you have some love for them; that there is enough love to go around, enough for all of us, for the Earth and all Her children. Enough to make magic.
