A friend of mine commented on my previous post, "Dancing Shoes," and I would like to respond here. Essentially he finds the term "revolution of love" a bit abstract, and I see why. First I will indicate the kinds of love I am not referring to here:
1. Sexual or erotic love: This has nothing to do with romance or hormones. I am reminded here of a recent interview I heard with singer Joni Mitchell on her seventieth birthday. She commented that the theme of love, or free love that prevailed during the hippie revolution of the sixties and early seventies really was to the benefit of men who had nothing to lose with the sexual revolution. For women this was quite another story and this has never been thoroughly documented.
2. Family love: For love to be revolutionary it would have to extend far beyond the confines of one's blood family or gene pool.
3. The love of one's community or nation or culture: The love I refer to has nothing to do with favouring one's particular race, nationality or ethnicity over others. This is actually counterintuitive to love as I understand it. Some of the most tragic outcomes of this kind of "Love" have been seen in the racial segregation and oppression of African Americans and Canadians, the Nazi Holocaust, the oppression of Palestinians in the Middle East, apartheid in South Africa.
4. The love between friends or allies: Once again this is a love that is limited and expresses favoritism. Love, to be revolutionary must be equally applied to all.
The love I have in mind here has a variety of names: Agape; Divine Love: Universal Love: Cosmic Love: Unconditional Love; Disinterested Love.
When I was taking a walk today between assignments at work I came across something quite lovely that suggests what I mean by a revolution of love. In a lovely landscaped square by a street intersection in a quiet residential neighbourhood in Mount Pleasant (Vancouver, where I live and from where I am writing this blog) there is a chessboard inlaid in the pavement with big wooden pieces all neatly aligned on their respective sides. Behind is a community bulletin board topped with a couple of book shelves loaded with books. This is outside, out in public space. Anybody, on a nice day, can sit and play chess. Or borrow a book to read. Certain individuals in the neighbourhood, motivated by a desire to enhance the well being of their community, chose and agreed to do this, likely without being paid. They know that through acts of selfless service, or disinterested love, they are improving if even in a small way the quality of life in their neighbourhood. In another part of the Mount Pleasant area on a street of heritage houses someone else has set up a small community library on the sidewalk, full of books that many people can enjoy or borrow or they are free to donate books. Nearby on the traffic circle garden the same people have set up chairs and a table for anyone who would like to sit and rest. In another neighbourhood, Strathcona, Vancouver's oldest residential community full of Victorian era heritage homes, on an asphalt square in a park, some people in the neighbourhood have painted a labyrinth which I have often walked.
I continued with my walk and saw by the sidewalk in front of a house a sign that said "Please feel free to come to the porch to see the castle." I climbed the stairs to almost the porch level (even with the open invitation I felt like a bit of a trespasser so I didn't go all the way up) to see in the window a beautifully constructed castle, I think made out of aluminum foil. In another neighbourhood someone hung a pair of glittering woman's silver party high heel shoes from a telephone wire in the same manner as sneakers. Perhaps instead of a crack house there was an illicit nail spa in the 'hood.
Here may I also mention: The man with the classically trained voice singing opera arias in Italian up and down Broadway and Granville. Passengers who shout thank you to the driver as they exit through the back door of the bus. People who hold doors open for complete strangers. People who stop to pet friendly cats and dogs and compliment strangers for their colour of dress, scarf or shirt, people who give money, or better, good nutritious food to beggars as well as time and friendship, people who create and tend community gardens as well as sidewalk and boulevard gardens, people who recycle. People who smile and say hi to strangers without an ulterior motive, or offer (and receive) free hugs, which occurred for me on the second day of my most recent visit to Mexico City, and those who ask to take your picture (as occurred for me on the first day of my most recent visit to Mexico City). People who shop and buy fair trade. But also those who walk quietly in the midst of the bustling crowd on the busy street, resisting the contagion of stress, hurry, and anxiety and try to make space and give way to others, taking care to see and notice not the mass of humanity but the individual persons while quietly offering up a prayer of love and hope for perfect strangers. I would also like to mention two Canadians who recently one tens of millions of dollars in the lottery and have donated it all to charity. I am not endorsing lotteries or any form of gambling here by the way and such an endorsement is never going to appear in this blog, rather I am suggesting that whatever we have to work with, that is going to be our beginning point.
These are the seeds of revolution. They are not the revolution itself. They need to be watered and nurtured and placed in good soil to grow strong and bear fruit. This has not happened yet. The little we do, the little we are can be the beginning of much greater ends if we persevere and find ways to organize and work together to help, beautify, support and build foundations and infrastructures of justice and equality. Our current political and economic system does nothing to foster health, justice or beauty. We need to work more together and find ways to agree and dream and plan for a society that includes all. We need to become political and community leaders who are not afraid to speak to and challenge the greed of corporations, banks and property developers, as well to the mining, oil and natural gas industries. We need to end poor-bashing and rediscover the nobility of the poor and make every effort to help raise them up because the poor are the leavening of society and their experience of life is essential to our collective well being. We especially need to rediscover our spirituality, not necessarily become religious though I would like to use this forum as a podium to call all people of faith to renew their lives and their spiritual commitments to become trees of life that bear fruit of healing to all people. Furthermore, I would like to call all of us to buy less stuff, to let the economy die a natural death because unlimited growth increases the divide and we have to start pulling together and stop creating individual fortresses of fear and distrust built of bank accounts and accumulated stuff. We need to resist the global war machine and continue our call to wage peace through peaceful means while living out this reality in our communal and individual lives. Most of all we need to start taking more time, to move more slowly, to reflect, pray, meditate, ask, listen and learn and see the beauty within and surrounding us, the beauty that the noise and flashing lights of daily life keep us numb, blind and deaf to.
I could say more but I really want those who read this to use their imagination and think and envision and become the change that they desire.
By far this is not a perfect world, and there is much evil, harm, environmental degradation, sickness, violence, injustice and sorrow. Let us not turn a blind eye to this. But look also for the beauty, the love, the nobility, the goodness and the justice and do every thing you can to embody these virtues. Despair gets us nowhere. Faith, hope and love will move mountains. The light will always overcome the darkness
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