The heart of love is full of compassion for the frailties of the human being. It understands the wish of its fellows to overcome its failings and to find success in the world of men and women. It holds fast to the dreams of caring, sharing and love, as it could exist, if the fears of the world could be healed and if we all believed in love more than we believe and live our divisions and our fears.
In the beginning of all life man knew his way to God and followed the heart very simply. In all of our lives we could do much more to simplify our lives and in turn simplify our relationship with God and with our fellow men.
Ritual in and of itself is not a bad thing nor is it a good thing. But ritual can sometimes cloud the issue. The issue is belief in God. Remember here, God enters most effectively into relationships with those who can see themselves clearly as God’s equal within that relationship. By this you understand that what you give to God is just as important as what God gives to you. What God needs most from everyone is simply love. Love is an ever flowing river that comes from God and flows past even the most intrinsically constructed barriers designed to keep it out. Love is the softest of things and therefor it can and does dissolve the hardest of hearts and minds.
In the relationship of God to man, there is no form save that which man creates from his own imaginings as necessary for that relationship to exist. With man there are any number of rituals that are performed not to worship or remember that God sent the Son to us, but rather to uphold the rigid institution of the church as man has created it. Christ said to his disciples at dinner to take bread and wine and share it and remember it as the body and blood that he will shed and share with them for their salvation. He did this with his disciples at dinner and yet the church tells you that the church is the only place that the Eucharist can be. We tell you truly that it is not. Wherever anyone comes in the name of the Father and the Son, comes both the Holy Mother Breath and the Holy Spirit. Share what you have and share the spirit and ideal of what all of the prophets and messengers of God came to share with all of us, so long ago.
Love does not tell another that they are unworthy to receive God because their belief are different that ours but instead extends the hand of love and shares with an open heart. To do otherwise is to divide and it is known that a house divided against itself cannot withstand the battering of the enemy at the door.
Each soul who believes in God sincerely and lives a good life will one day come to know and love God in all ways. How could we not? For we must live our lives out in all forms and rituals in order to one day come to the knowledge that love, in and of itself, is benediction of the highest form and true love is the only ritual that you need to perform in order to love and serve yourself and God. True love is expressed from the heart of one who knows and believes in true love, as service to your fellow men. This too, is a way to simplify your life and to come to understand that you have been sent here to live your own life and to run your own life and not that of any other being who lives upon the Earth.
So too it is with your children. As parents you are here to guide and protect the youngest of these but you all must learn and stand back and allow them to live the life that they have chosen for themselves. This is not a copout as you are so fond of saying but rather an act of faith in yourself and in God. Each of you must remember that a life of hardship or a life of excessive wealth lie as equals, for each requires the most effort to know yourself and to come to know and love God. The poor must find ways to overcome the need to provide through disorder and chaos and so must the rich. Each one can lack the deeper purposes of life and arrogantly think that God is not for them or that God has abandoned them. Each must strive very hard to keep their lives in balance and not be overcome by the circumstances of their lives.
That is what is meant by the camel and the eye of the needle statement made by Jesus, but as with all things, this too is true of the poor as well as the rich in our society today. Each must learn to become unattached to the idea that being wealthy is so important or that being poor is a blessed state of affairs. It is sad to say this but poverty and greed have been served by institutions of God telling its members that being poor was their lot in life and they should just accept it. Each of you can be beggars in the world if you have no faith in anything greater than yourself. You can be rich if you have faith in the bounty of the Earth and if you have belief in the goodness and mercy of all your fellow beings who inhabit the Earth with you.
As with most things, habit and patterns of thought and behaviour that is activated by thought and belief, are nearly impossible to change. Love and understanding are the most important things that each of you can exhibit to your fellow beings when you know that there is a condition that must be changed. Also one should include, at times, those who would benefit most from activities that would help them change any condition of thought or health that needs to be changed. Always, these things must be done with kindness and understanding. By this we mean, do not ask a fat friend on a twenty mile hike but instead include them on a short walk that you may have been going to take anyway, then make the pace enjoyable for them. If you make the puff and labour for breath then they are more likely to give up from shame. Never use shame to help anyone to know themselves and God. IT DOES NOT WORK. All shame ever does is make a person burrow more deeply into despair.
With all things in life, think always of love, which means to ask how would love serve itself, here and now. If you do this, then you will find that love, true love is beginning to enter your life as habit and it will be the one habit that you never want to break.
Know this and be of God. All unfolds as it should.
In the garden blooms the rose
Its name most will never know
It shares its color, form and light
With its fellows day and night
And when the light has passed away
It shares its fragrance with all who lay
On pallets sleeping through the night
Protected by Gods heavenly light
This lovely roses name is called love
And this heavenly rose comes not from above
But instead it resides in every heart and soul
Who know the truth not the half, but the whole
So now you know that the garden is you
Tend to your rose with care
For then when you need it most
It will always be there
Be sure to give your rose to all that you meet
So then you will never suffer defeat
Instead you will harvest, wherever you go
And the sweet rose of love inside you forever will glow
Florence Mary Masotti 1994.
