Living With Trauma 19

"Be generous with your love. It's the only treasure that grows as you give it away." I saw those words painted in rainbow colours on the sidewalk by the site of the "People's Park." This was an organized squat to prevent the land at the main entrance to our famous Stanley Park from being developed into high-rises. Various social activists, hippies and wandering lost souls lived there in tents for a few months in 1971. I was fifteen, and visited several times and met and talked to some of the people there. What they lacked in skills and sophistication were more than compensated by their love and passion for seeing this site preserved for posterity. Now it is a park. But, back to those words. I have been writing a lot, Gentle Reader, about love, the importance and absolute necessity of love for healing our lives, our communities and our world. Will we ever get there? I don't know. Would I dare suggest that this is not an achievable dream? Never! As soon as we say those words, that it's never going to happen, we have poisoned our mission and disempowered ourselves. We don't know the future, and often can't even reasonably forecast the future. But to carry out our various missions in life we need a vision. My vision is a world healed by love. I do not dare say this will never happen, whether ever, or in my lifetime, regardless of the laws of probability. This is my vision, and this is the life I have been called into, and this is the work God has given me to do, however damaged and imperfect my efforts. Again, back to those words. "Be generous with your love." This is an oxymoron. If it is love, then it is going to be generous. That is the nature of love. This is not the kind of devotion or affection reserved within families or between spouses, lovers or close friends. That is a shadow, or a reflection of love. It is better than nothing, but it doesn't spread. If it is real love, it is going to spread and reach and touch others. That is, if it is from God. I have sometimes heard from others this lame idea that all they have to do is to love the people who matter to them, but that is really a selfish excuse for remaining in bondage to fear. And please don't give me any claptrap about being an introvert, which is yet another lame excuse for being timid, awkward and selfish. Love is a choice. And because love is such a powerful metaphysic, being the Spirit of the Living God in Action, is going to bestow powerful consequences in the lives of all of us who give love our consent. This is what is really going to change us and our world. When we bravely open ourselves to the love that transcends and brings together all our feeble understanding of what love is and become ourselves channels and vectors of the divine love. It requires only a handful of brave, courageous souls to do this. This doesn't guarantee a friendly response from others. Look what happened to Our Lord Jesus Christ, God's love in human form, when he made real this love? They ignominiously nailed him to the cross. But love would not remain dead because by its very nature love must rise triumphant. So shall it be for those of us, in our troubled and traumatized and traumatic world, when we give our consent to the healing, cleansing and conquering power of love. There will be no stopping us, then.