Good morning! I thought this quote would be a great way to start the week. It's beautiful and so true.
Love. It doesn't matter what religion you look at, love always seems to be the main message, without human manipulation, that is. At its core, love is always the most important lesson. Jesus taught a lot of things, but loving was the basis for every lesson he taught us. If you love God, you love others, and love yourself, you've lived well. Love people who are difficult to love, not only the ones who are easy to love. As the Bible says, where is the reward in that? Love those who need it most along with those who are loved by many. Love with your whole self, sacrifice yourself for someone else, and don't betray your heart. Listen to your heart when you love. Know when to love, and know when to let go. Don't be paralyzed by your fears, whatever they may be, just love someone. The meaning of your life is to love.
Live Gently...this to me, seems like a natural effect of love. If you love your neighbor, even your enemies, you can't go thrashing around like a violent storm, slamming into people and tearing things apart, but rather, you're a gentle breeze, soft on someone's back. Be a gentle spirit, not a violent, angry hurricane, wrecking things and breaking people. You can't be filled with love and behave like a wrecking ball. It isn't possible.
Letting go gracefully......there are different parts to this, in my opinion.
1. To know yourself enough well enough to know the difference between things that are meant for you and not meant for you, is graceful in and of itself. This means that you accept things beyond your desires and wishes. A person who is accepting is gentle and therefore graceful. Forcing anything: parts of a machine, people, yourself....forcefulness is never graceful. It's hard.
2. If you have to let go of something, that means that you were hanging on to it. Why do we hang on? Because we have attachment to and love whatever it is we are hanging on to. We don't want to feel pain when it isn't there, we fear what we will encounter once we let it go, what will happen. (This could be a person, a role or identity, a job, an emotional shield or resentment.) Take a person, for example, because this is more than likely where people struggle the most....There is a fine love between love and hate, but are you going to let the person go, whether they're leaving or you're leaving, and love them and wish the best for them, even though you're hurt? Are you going to be graceful? Or are you going to seek revenge and wish bad things on them? In that case, you're hurting the other person and yourself. I'm not like that at all. In fact, I have a hard time walking away from people and things that I love because I'm pretty much incapable of hating someone, and therefore it's hard to remember that I need to walk away when I still love. I also don't like leaving things broken, but want to clean it up first. You know, I don't understand HOW people can wish bad things on others, honestly. It makes no sense to me. If I love someone and I'm walking away, you'd better believe that I hope and pray the best happens to them, since I won't be there anymore to help them and love them. When you love someone, you want the best for them, end of story. If you don't, you don't love them, or you love yourself and your feelings more and care about your hurt more than you care about them.
3. Gracefulness also includes trust. When you let go of something, you trust that you are going somewhere better, somewhere meant for you. You also trust that the thing you're leaving will be fine without you. People who have hopes and dreams and aren't paralyzed by fear, are graceful. When you believe, you are powerful and beautiful. To move on, you must let go of fear. That is freeing and graceful.
3. Faith. You are faithful to yourself and others. Faith is graceful, gentle, loving.
4. When you won't let go, you cannot grow and move forward, and sometimes you might actually regress. When I lost my things in the fire, I decided that I wasn't going to dwell on what I lost because there wasn't anything I could do to get them back. Trust me, when I think about how I lost my babies' footprints from the hospital, I feel like I am suffocating. But I have my kids, so it could be worse. It's a decision to move on, more times than not. It is a commitment. To "let go" of a person or thing and then go back over and over, you haven't let go, and this just causes continuous pain. Stumbling isn't graceful like a ballerina dancing. Dance, don't stumble.
Love, be gentle, and don't cling to things that aren't your destiny. Imagine if we can do these things.....
We can.
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