otherbrother
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I just added these lines to my notebook of possible songs. I think the notion behind it is highly relevant to our peace/contemplative practices/project:
“For the first time in my life
I feel like I belong,
because I finally realized
you don’t have to like my song.
I just bring it as I sing it,
and trust that it’s okay,
accepting and embracing,
not requiring love per se.”
Love, Peace, Faith.
All three important.
Interdependent but also separate.
Peace and Faith fall into the camp of “being.” Can we just “be”? As God created us as a gift?
Peace is the emotion accompanying acceptance, “yes”.
Faith is the attitude that the creation called a self has what it takes to as accomplish whatever’s worth accomplishing (suggesting that a sense of “purpose” is an important element of faith).
Both (three if you include purpose) involve the art of intentionally being, as a verb: “to be.” And it is a different skill set or “art” than “loving”.
The reason people have trouble really loving themselves is because it’s mixing apples and oranges. It’s barking up the wrong tree. It’s the wrong formula for personal success.
The art of love is one of traveling outside oneself. Love is highly nomadic, often leaving one’s own being so far behind that it is forgotten about. In general, women are more prone to loving themselves away.
In general, men are better at ONLY being, forgetting to go abroad. No wonder a strong, even pathological, sense of nationalism often surfaces in a male-dominated society. And/or imperialism, which is not traveling, but conquest instead, anabolic addition to being.
Having said that, the self-absorbed tendencies of maleness DOES bring something valuable to the potluck of becoming fully, wholly, human.
If a person specializes in love, while neglecting being, he or she (more often she) may try to love themselves more. It’s a flawed strategy that bears little fruit. No matter how much the person tries to love themselves, it just doesn’t seem to work.
This is because a person “can’t,” as the joke says, “get there from here” if he/she is trying to go outside self to be self.
While it is true that love has a reciprocal, interdependent, relationship with being, and greatly enhances it, it does so in an indirect, roundabout, way. You can’t simply mash being and love together and end up with a tasty dish.
Men in general are quicker to appreciate the need to intentionally BE.
One the other hand, they are doomed to eventual failure if they don’t also move beyond their masculine default setting in order to open up their self-systems and avoid entropy. The feminine default program of love “saves” men from their pathetic crumbling selves.
Women in general teach them how to harvest the fruits of love.
The goal is for each specialist to become androgynous. The word “transgender” probably should have been used for this integrated development. Cross gender is what the currently used word (transgender) really seems to mean. But it’s only a word. And “androgynous” suffices. The important thing is to understand the dynamics of psychological and spiritual growth.
Faith and peace need to be mastered independently of love. And love needs to be mastered independently of faith and peace.
And then integrated, woven together.
“For the first time in my life
I feel like I belong,
because I finally realized
you don’t have to like my song.
I just bring it as I sing it,
and trust that it’s okay,
accepting and embracing,
not requiring love per se.”
Love, Peace, Faith.
All three important.
Interdependent but also separate.
Peace and Faith fall into the camp of “being.” Can we just “be”? As God created us as a gift?
Peace is the emotion accompanying acceptance, “yes”.
Faith is the attitude that the creation called a self has what it takes to as accomplish whatever’s worth accomplishing (suggesting that a sense of “purpose” is an important element of faith).
Both (three if you include purpose) involve the art of intentionally being, as a verb: “to be.” And it is a different skill set or “art” than “loving”.
The reason people have trouble really loving themselves is because it’s mixing apples and oranges. It’s barking up the wrong tree. It’s the wrong formula for personal success.
The art of love is one of traveling outside oneself. Love is highly nomadic, often leaving one’s own being so far behind that it is forgotten about. In general, women are more prone to loving themselves away.
In general, men are better at ONLY being, forgetting to go abroad. No wonder a strong, even pathological, sense of nationalism often surfaces in a male-dominated society. And/or imperialism, which is not traveling, but conquest instead, anabolic addition to being.
Having said that, the self-absorbed tendencies of maleness DOES bring something valuable to the potluck of becoming fully, wholly, human.
If a person specializes in love, while neglecting being, he or she (more often she) may try to love themselves more. It’s a flawed strategy that bears little fruit. No matter how much the person tries to love themselves, it just doesn’t seem to work.
This is because a person “can’t,” as the joke says, “get there from here” if he/she is trying to go outside self to be self.
While it is true that love has a reciprocal, interdependent, relationship with being, and greatly enhances it, it does so in an indirect, roundabout, way. You can’t simply mash being and love together and end up with a tasty dish.
Men in general are quicker to appreciate the need to intentionally BE.
One the other hand, they are doomed to eventual failure if they don’t also move beyond their masculine default setting in order to open up their self-systems and avoid entropy. The feminine default program of love “saves” men from their pathetic crumbling selves.
Women in general teach them how to harvest the fruits of love.
The goal is for each specialist to become androgynous. The word “transgender” probably should have been used for this integrated development. Cross gender is what the currently used word (transgender) really seems to mean. But it’s only a word. And “androgynous” suffices. The important thing is to understand the dynamics of psychological and spiritual growth.
Faith and peace need to be mastered independently of love. And love needs to be mastered independently of faith and peace.
And then integrated, woven together.