You are love

When you read the words above, "You are love," I bet your mind focused on the word "love," rather than on the word, "you."  Right? I know I did when I wrote that powerful, yet short phrase. Like most of us, I pray for and work toward being Love.

Maybe we know, or don't know, what love is.  Maybe we've heard a lot of stuff on what love is and most of it might be true.  But, the point here is on who you are.  

We are not our jobs, our families, our ethnic origins, our bodies, our health or lack thereof, our financial circumstances - wealthy or not, our homes or net asset value.  While those qualities and characteristics may be swirling around in our energy fields, in our consciousness, in our every day activities, they are not us and they do not define us.  

I know so many people, myself included, who struggle with being whole and holy people in a materialistic, money-oriented, cold, crass, corrupt world. I heard recently that for a woman to become successful she must be a "bitch." And, I certainly have met my share of those ladies. 

"Well, there goes ever being successful," I thought.  

I won't sell out the light of God or the love of God for ANYTHING. I won't be rude or selfish or mean or sharp-tongued, cavalier, nonchalant to get an upper edge on someone.  I won't be controlling.  I won't be polluted by the toxicity of our rotting old way, which by necessity must decline and ultimately cease to be. Will we still be standing in the ashes of the old world when the golden age peeks through the fog and smoke?  Everyday, we consciously or unconsciously encounter situations and people who challenge us to either be loving, kind, caring, honest and open or be controlling, manipulative, deceptive, gossiping, mean and closed. We may be deceived into thinking they have what it takes to be successful and financially viable in a diminishing middle class.  

Sometimes I feel like Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind who throws her fist in the air and declares, "With God as my witness I'm going to live through this and when it's all over I'm never going to be hungry again."

That is who Scarlet is, a powerful woman determined to not be defeated by the death and war around her. Forget the rest of the story, although it has significant psychological / spiritual merit.

Despite my own frustrations with less magnanimous people, I will not step down my standards of being loving. It's a tall order which requires discipline, prayer and mindfulness.  It's the good fight, I guess. But, it's the only way that leads us out of the dark, out of the overgrown, polluted cultural, political, economic and social climate in which we're all steeped today.

How are we going to survive what's at our doorstep and is already infecting us?  

With God all things are possible. And, God is love, and so are we - at the core of our being. There is nothing in our universe other than God and I believe God is even in the dark spaces where we think we're alone, abandoned, forgotten, left to die in the burned out battlefield of our interiority. 

When we choose God, choose to love, swallow hard sometimes, smile when we'd rather cry, stand up politely to the "bitches" in our workplace or world, and know that we are doing that all for a noble cause, we are being love. We are being true to who we are, who God made us to be, and who we really are.  

The old teachings of the church taught us - especially women (and all other oppressed groups of people) - to be slaves, servants and doormats to authority.  In order to stand up with integrity, with a commitment to survive, to get through this day or this hour on the way to that "more excellent way," St. Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13, we have to do it with grace, kindness, gentleness, open hearts hearing the other persons' need to be loved and respected, to hear their exhaustion, their own drowning in the over-the-top spiritual toxicity levels like most of us, and yet at the same time, stand up for ourselves. 

When we honor the love, the whole value of Who is in us and Who made us and Who is calling us out into the light of our authentic being, out of the dark inner caverns, then we will begin to feel the power of that love.  

Please remember.You are love. Breathe that in, exhale the darkness, call in the light, breathe and know that you are a most beloved child of God.

Remember it through all that you are going through, through the pain, the disappointment and everything else.  You can discover heaven within your heart and mind and soul and draw it out into your life and the world.  It is there waiting for you. 

Return to who you are. You are love and you are loved and you are loving and all of that can be taken up many octaves, beyond anything you've ever known, but can and will know someday. 

You are love and nothing less.  You are love.