It Actually Is ...

This monologue opens one of my favourite movies. I expect a few others feel the same way. 

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. 

General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. 

When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. 

If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love, actually, is all around.” 

No, I don't have my head in the sand. There is so much to be sad about in this world. Still, I believe that no matter where you go, there is love between individuals, too. 

Let's be good to one another. Please. 

Why?

As a child, everything that happened or was expected of me required an answer to that simple question. I was definitely an annoying child but luckily I grew up with loving folks who tolerated my curious (and persistent) nature. Yet, for a very long time, being grown up meant losing my 'why' obsession. I think this had to do with the feeling that life was without purpose. Life seemed for a long time to be something to be endured.

Fortunately, in my mid-thirties, I regained a small share of that childhood curiosity. The documents, transcribed in 2016 beginning here, written in the late 1980s mostly, came about because of an obsession with knowing if life, my life in particular, had a purpose. I cannot imagine my life now without referring to the answer that came to me then and lives inside me.

In the video below Rabbi Simon Jacobson delves into the question of what gives life purpose and gives an answer that I can relate to very strongly. I particularly appreciate that while he approaches his attempt to answer that question from a Biblical scholar and Kabbalist's perspective, he shows great respect for the intelligence and background of his listener. As he quotes in his talk “the God you don't believe in, I don't believe in, too". 

Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the Creator intended for you. — Hopi proverb

A Master's Words

 Everything hangs on the little word

here

and its sibling

now

But I often forget this,

keeping busy with my plans;

building for a future I cannot know

and against worries I cannot finally tame.

And yet, You wait for me to come home to Your now

which is beyond past and future,

and return to Your here

which is present before beginning

and beyond every ending.

If I could love as God loves

I would not fear the judgment of others,

or the loss of my very self,

and would know that God is the one who knows and loves

and desires himself and all things,

and loves me most when I finally let go of trying and simply let myself

live love.

Ours is not the work of seeking You here or there where we think You might be,

but of opening the heart’s door.

And when we do this You cannot resist coming in,

since our opening and Your entering

are one.

You knock and wait.

And when we open, we find

that You were there all along,

and will not leave us.

~~

Meister Eckhart