Is There Any Real Love Left In This World?

During times such as these, when climate change is so predominate that people are dying in mass numbers all over our globe, wars are ongoing and seem to be on the brink of breaking out on any given notice, people are demanding their freedom in Middle East countries and willing to die to get it, political factions are at each other’s throats like never before in the history of our generation’s memory, and even our religious groups are harboring deep bitter divides like never experienced in recent history, all of us are in need of respite, real love, care, compassion and rest from the sheer chaos and divisive tension that hits us before we even leave our homes each and every day to rush off to our place of work.

It is out of realizing the need of real respite, a calm in the storm, that this blog was birthed. A Facebook Page, The Broken Church – On The Path to Healing has been created to sister this blog so that readers can gather there and share their daily experiences and ways they have found to cope with life’s madness. We also have a Twitter account and we hope to share a positive message, on a frequent basis, to uplift your spirit. If you would like to connect with us on Twitter our call out name is @HealingChurch.

Our focus is simple, to include ALL people. We don’t pick and choose who comes in to our presence, because we don’t believe God does either. We are an all-inclusive group. Our love spans across all divides. If this world is to begin to heal, the divides must begin to narrow and eventually close completely. That can only happen one baby step at a time with all of us holding our bitter tongues while speaking only words of care, understanding, support and love. We must open our “boxed minds” to embrace the differences we see before us. Our message MUST be one of LOVE and ACCEPTANCE, while the hate and bigotry must immediately end. When our arms reach out, they must reach out in love and in giving, while the fists must relax and turn into open palms ready to help and lift heavy hearts, or receive help in return. In all things we must exercise patience and caution and be slow to anger.

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control...
A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back... Proverbs 29:11

Turn That Frown Upside Down

I’m having one of those days. In fact, I’m having one of those years.  I just don’t feel appreciated. I don’t feel needed. I don’t feel understood. And I don’t feel, well, validated. I really don’t feel like I matter.

What is it in each of us that need to feel all of these qualities? Is it simply pride? Or is it something different? Is it part of the human need to connect with others?  I think if we focus on the “us” all of the time and hog it all inside of us for the sheer reason of making ourselves feel better, and then yes, it is for nothing more than self-pride. But if we are truly trying to connect with society and do something for the good of the whole of society then feeling like you “matter” in the World probably isn’t such a bad quality to yearn for.

But how you go about “mattering” to the rest of the World is the real trick now isn’t it? What is your “claim to fame”? How do you go about making your mark on your corner of the World and accomplish the task of doing enough good that you get the validation your ego craves, but not so much appreciation that your head explodes into a hydroponically grown Cinderella carriage that turns into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight? In other words, you want your validation to be real, you want authentic respect from the community in which you live, but you don’t want false worship and adoration.

This has always been my nemesis. I have always been my worst enemy when it comes to success. I always sabotage my own success. I’ve always known that I have success in my blood, it courses through my veins. But when I almost reach it, bam, I smack it down and run like hell to escape it for fear of being falsely worshiped. I just can’t stand the thought of masses of people falling all over me for creating something that might be valuable to communities the globe over.

And where does this fear of success land me? Where I am today, suffering from lack of appreciation, validation, misunderstanding and feeling like I don’t matter in this world. I do it to myself, so I don’t have anyone to blame but me. And I think if all us would look at our lives closely most of us would realize that we bring this cycle of rejection on ourselves, no one does it to us, we do it to ourselves, and we usually bring it upon ourselves out of some kind of deep-seated fear of long ago we haven’t dealt with.

The first step to overcoming this “cycle” is first recognizing that we are doing this to ourselves, the second step is calling it for what it is, the third step is deciding to something about it and the fourth step is to stop allowing the fear to control us. Maybe the last step is to take the biggest step of all and forge ahead and DO what it is that we are most afraid to do and make the change, proceed with our dream, desire or idea and make it happen. Then no matter what comes with that dream, good or bad, and “good or bad” is in the eye of the beholder, just push through. Don’t let any feeling you’re having stop you.

So if you feel afraid of success, push through. If you’re afraid of fame, push through. If you’re afraid of failure, push through. If you’re afraid of what people will say about your success, push through. If you’re afraid others will be jealous of you, push through. In all, push through. Because if you don’t you are going to go through the cycle again and again and again leaving yourself feeling unappreciated, defeated, disrespected, misunderstood, invalidated, and like you don’t matter. How many times do you have to go through this cycle, how many times do you have to experience these feelings until you realize that it’s not worth playing? Why do you feel like you’re not worth the same amount of success that others enjoy? That’s just not a true feeling, it has no real basis. You know it, I know it and the rest of the world knows it.

And even if there are others who don’t want you to succeed it doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to succeed. They have their own “worlds” to conquer, you have yours. They have their own crosses to bear, you have yours. In the end no one’s going to answer for your life but you. In the end you need to feel like you’ve lived your life to the fullest and you have made valuable contributions to the World.

There may be no greater contribution than to share love through your own creativity, something you have created from your own imagination and then offered it up to the World for use.

You will find your validation, appreciation, respect, success, understanding and the feeling that you “matter” when you push through all of the obstacles you and others place in front of you and forge through with your desires, dreams and ideas.

I have to remind myself every once in awhile that I’m my own worst enemy and it’s up to me to become my own best friend and encourage myself to become whatever it is that I want to become.

I have to remind myself that I appreciate, respect and understand myself even when no one else does. And even when no one else seems to be validating me, I can validate myself simply by creating what it is that I have the talent to create and then sit back and admire it. Yes, “sit back and admire and what I have created.” That’s not narcissistic arrogant pride, that’s self-appreciation for the sake of self-acceptance, self-nurturing and self-survival. That’s a healthy form of “self-love”.

This is the stuff we need to model to our children so they will grow up to respect their own selves. Our children need to see that yes, their parents may have not-so-good days, but that they eventually pull themselves out of the pit and begin seeing themselves in the light they are supposed to, as valuable people even with the imperfections we have. Our children need to see us in our ugliness and in all of our glory; they need to see us in our human-ness. Then they will realize that it’s okay for them to be “regular” people too. They already have far too many super-stars to live up to; they need regular people in their daily lives to understand that it’s okay to be, well, “normal”.

So, yeah, while I’m having one of those days, I intend to turn it around. I will turn my frown upside down. It may take me a couple of hours, or it may take me a couple of days, but I will turn it around. What doesn’t “matter” is that time will pass by and the way I’m feeling will be nothing but a blip on my radar screen. My thinking will reset and I will find new hope, a new reason for living and my creative juices will begin to flow again realizing that if I can offer just one little bit of hope for one more person to go on dreaming and living their life’s purpose then I have been validated, and that’s what makes me matter.

*You matter too because somehow today, probably unknowingly, you will give someone hope to go on living. When you least expect it, you will be an example to someone. You may never know that you have been an example, so turn your frown upside down, and be sure to smile!

UnWelcome

Have you ever been invited to someone’s house but the minute you stepped inside you felt unwelcome?  I bet you have. And from that point on your entire visit was terribly uncomfortable, you didn’t quite know how to respond to any of their questions, you didn’t know how you should act, whether you should ask to use their restroom or “hold it in”, or just what you were “allowed” to do or say. You wanted to make a good impression but somehow you just felt “off” and unsettled inside, your  gut told you that something just wasn’t right with the whole visit and needless to say, the relationship overall.  You almost felt embarrassed to be there and felt you should leave, but that would bring another, still more uncomfortable situation up, so you just dealt with the uncomfortable feeling until the visit had run its course and you could respectfully leave.

What you were feeling is called “rejection”. And it comes in all shapes, sizes and flavors. None of us are immune to it. In fact it begins happening to us before we ever leave our house in the morning. Let me give you some examples I bet you’re really familiar with.

You climb out of bed and maybe turn on the morning news. You see some talking head telling you that his kid got beat up in school yesterday because he wore a T-shirt to school that had a logo of the American Flag on it. You shake your head in disgust and start to walk away from the T.V., but just a minute, you have school-age children and you begin to think, “Huh, this could be my kid”. Not only do you begin to feel rejection for that kid on T.V., you begin to feel rejection for your kid too should he ever be put in a similar situation, and it comes all the way home to you when you remember experiencing a school-yard fight over something just like this when you were a kid. (Never mind the larger issue of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”) Anyway, you begin to get that sinking feeling way down deep in the pit of your stomach that tells you this day is not starting out all too well.

You kind of shrug all of that off, try to get readjusted and back in tune with what lays ahead of your day. You turn your laptop on to quickly check in with your email account and Facebook, then SMACK!, you see that a couple of your best used-to-be friends on Facebook has “unfriended” you because of conflicting political and religious beliefs, and the emails they sent you are downright shredding your ego. With shoulders beginning to slump, you pull yourself off your office chair and head in to the kitchen for more caffeine. As you find your way to the door and out to the car to head to work, you’re wondering to yourself, “Now what? Do I remain in the FB communities where the same friends are members, or do I leave with my tail between my legs? If I stay I might just have to lurk only and remain voiceless because surely everyone will know that my two best friends rejected…what??? Uh, oh, there’s THAT word. REJECTED. I’ve been…rejected. “Yes, you’ve been rejected two times, already this morning, three times if you count both friends, and you’ve barely made it to your car.

The crux of these thoughts is this, all of us suffer rejection all of the time in many ways, shapes, forms, at all times of each and every day. Some of the rejection is real, and some of it is purely perceived.  There isn’t a whole lot we can do to stop real rejection from coming our way, and we can’t remove our self from society, although many of us try by becoming reclusive. Even then we find ourselves connecting on social media sites because as humans we are meant to be, well, “social” creatures.  The possibility of being rejected is kind of a built in danger that comes with existing that we might experience at any point in time. There’s really nothing we can do to stop the threat of rejection.

But there is something we can do to lessen the threat of feeling the pain of being rejected, and that’s taking control of our own emotions and how we react to other people’s words and actions. It’s not so much what other people say or do as much as how we perceive what other people say and do. It’s all about our own perception. And this comes under the heading of “self-love”. We all must learn how to love our own selves properly. If we learn how to love ourselves, we will be better at loving others around us.  It starts with us though. Everything starts with us, with “self”, the “within”.

I’m not talking about the narcissistic kind of love when you think you are the greatest thing to walk planet Earth. I’m talking about learning to nurture you in a kind and compassionate way.

Many times the reason many of us are so sensitive to rejection is because we are first and foremost our own worst enemies and we are self-rejecting before anyone else gets the chance to.

It’s mostly about the “tapes” we play over and over in our heads. You know, the words of condemnation we carry over from our childhood when we were told by our friends that we weren’t good enough to be on their team, or when we were excluded out of the “clique” when a new kid from another state started our school and everyone wanted to be their new, best friend, or when our parents told us over and over again that we had to “shape up or ship out” or we wouldn’t become a “productive member of society”, or one of our teachers in high school made us stay after class day after day to get our grade higher because “he knew we could do better than we we’re doing, if we would just put a little more effort into our work”. It’s those tapes that we have carried to our adult years and that’s all we hear now except now those tapes play in our voices, saying those words and the script pertains to our world today. Today it’s our own voice saying, “Self, you better shape up or you’re going to lose your job.” Or, “Self, if you want to be a productive member of society you will…..” and you fill in the blanks…and there are oh so many blanks to fill in! Or, “Self, if you will just stay a little longer at the office you will earn a higher pay grade.” Yep, we condemn ourselves each and every day. We find fault with ourselves and when we don’t listen to the tapes and choose to do the opposite of what the tapes tell us to do; we reject ourselves and begin telling ourselves just how bad we are. “Well, if you would have done this, or you would have done that, then this would have happened or that would have happened.” Then when other people even begin to look like they are about to give us the slightest look of rejection or begin to say something that we perceive even a hint of a tone of rejection, we take it ALL in and it becomes rejection with a capital “R”.

Where’s the self-love? When do we begin to realize that we are, after all, human? And when do we start realizing we are not Superhuman? When do we become a little less critical of ourselves and a little more accepting?

When do we learn that the sooner we begin to accept ourselves for who we are, the sooner we will be able to accept others for who they are?

This World is in need of a paradigm shift in perception. We all chant how we want change. But none of us really seem to know what kind of change we are looking for. We all seem to wander about aimlessly searching for that illusive “change”.  Really the change all of us want is to be accepted for who we really are, to not be rejected. I believe that begins with self-acceptance. And I believe self-acceptance begins with a paradigm change in perception of one’s own self, or “self-perception”, after that comes how one views others and the World around him or herself.

You’ve heard it said, “All the World needs is a little more love”. I contend that all the World needs is a little less rejection. After that love will naturally follow. Love is a pretty big concept. We need to take baby steps to back ourselves out of the mess we’ve created. It begins with each of us learning, maybe for the very first time, how to love our own selves appropriately.

Stop rejecting yourself. Start by welcoming yourself back into your own heart. Then we will see the World change, one heart at a time. Then we can say, “Welcome World, into my heart”, and mean it.

A Short Story About Love (And Why I Believe God Let’s Us Create Our Own Reality)

I haven’t believed in “Hell” with a capital “H” in a very long time. I came to this revelation in the early ’90′s I guess, about the time I began to spend quite a bit of time alone with God because I was so “dirt poor” that I didn’t have anything but my Bible and a bed for my lowly apartment.

I spent night after night reading my Bible and then each day I spent hours driving back and forth to work between three different jobs. Alone. I was really alone those days. And I LOVED it. I loved it because it gave me time to get to know who I was in Christ and who Christ was manifesting to be in me.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that my “living hell” was right now, on Earth and that if I could survive what I was living through, then I pretty much could survive through anything. And indeed I did, and I have, and I am. But I also came to believe that hell IS being separated from God and I knew, and know, that I definitely DO NOT want to be separated from God for an eternity. I also came to believe, and still do to this day, that hell is pretty much what a person makes it.

Yeah, you read that right.

God is a God of creation, creativity. We are created in His image (imagination). And He gave us the same ability to imagine and create. We use our own imagination to create. It is my “far out” belief that we create our own “hell”. If we believe we are going to hell, we will. And if we believe we are going to heaven, we will. I know that sounds really, really simplistic, but if “love wins”, and we truly believe that love wins, then it does. But if we don’t believe that love wins, then it doesn’t and we have created our own hell.

My daughter had a NDE, “near death experience” when she crashed her friends truck at the tender age of 16. After experiencing five points of impact, one being a city light pole and two being trees before her final impact being a dead stop into a sloping, hard-packed landscaped mound, she literally saw her life pass before her eyes while she was unconscious. She has re-told her story to me many times and it’s always the same, stating “our hell, Mom, is knowing what you have left undone, unsaid and the people you have judged wrongly in your life, as well as believing you are not worthy of God’s.” Since her accident my viewpoints on God and how He manages all of His creation has seriously changed my thinking about all things spiritual. And the revelations my daughter continues to receive even further shapes my thinking about just how much God allows us to create our own reality regarding our Earthly life as well as our Eternal life. Now if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

I have not yet read the book by Rob Bell regarding hell, but I have a feeling no matter what he says in his book, I will always believe that, in fact, love does win, and in the end we get exactly what we “believe” we deserve, just as Jesus stated so often, “just believe”. And that’s why I believe God allows us to create our own reality, here on Earth as well as in the afterlife, because wouldn’t it be hell to imagine our own worst hell? And wouldn’t it be heaven to imagine our own best dream come true? And if we do what Jesus tells us to do, “just believe”, then it’s just as simple as that. Jesus tells us, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”  ”Like a little child”…we all know that a little child has such an imagination…and oh, the wonderful imagination a little child has…

This is how much God loves us, enough for us to create our own destiny, our own eternity.

The greatest love story ever told.

Passion

For as long as I can remember I have had this deep, deep thing in me that springs up every so often that I can’t contain. It absolutely takes over every part of my being and drives me. When I was very young I had no idea that I had to control it, “put a cap on it”, let alone reserve it for times when I was in private and not in the public eye. At times I would just burst out in childish joy and begin bubbling about any location I might find myself in, undoubtedly embarrassing my parents, hence the phrase I would often hear slide through my mother’s lips, “What would the neighbor’s think?”

As I grew I began to realize that this “thing” was something to be reckoned with and I had to tame it, much to my internal chagrin. I learned that while I loved this beast inside of me, I could only let it out to play when I expressed it in a more humanly manner, like when I sat alone in my bedroom, usually tucked away in my lowly closet, with a pad and some pencils to spend hours away from my family drawing squiggly little doo-dads of mushrooms, exotic wild animals and whatever else caught my fancy. I guess my drawings were a way of allowing that inner-beast to come out on paper and tell its own story of freeing itself from the cage in which it dwelled.

As I matured I resorted to acrylic and oil paints, but I never really took a liking to those mediums as much as I did the graphite. There was just something more “organic” about the lead contained in slender, wooden bark than the chemical smell of the paints. Although I took advantage of learning color theory through using paint as a medium for art, I still would always go back to graphite and the plain “black and white” of depicting life on raw paper. Somehow that’s how I viewed life, “black and white”.  All of the color had been drained when I realized that my “inner-beast” was not welcome at family gatherings and the only place I could allow it to make a tiny peep was my own tiny, little closet in my own small bedroom. Hmmm…black and white, that’s where my life would exist for many, many years. Color would escape me until I found the beauty in birds…

And oh the beauty they have! Specifically I found myself attached to parrots! My husband introduced me to parrots before we were married. At the time I had no interest whatsoever in them. But it wasn’t long after we were married that they grabbed my very soul.  Long story short, being a nutrition enthusiast I developed an organic, whole-food diet for our own parrots. I just couldn’t imagine feeding them the commercial cardboard-box pellets found in the stores that are full of pesticides and preservatives. No, these beautiful, most-innocent creatures of God deserved much, much more. So I set out to feed them the best that I could drum up!  And I found in doing so that their plumage was even more beautiful and brighter, more colorful than any other parrots that I would come in contact with. I was totally and completely in love. I learned that the inner-beast I had been trying to tame all of my years was that thing called “passion”. But it is really no good without purpose. Well, I had found my PASSION and it had purpose behind it.  My husband and I started our own business producing and selling our food and our business grew and grew. Unfortunately, at the height of our business success my health failed and we had to close our business. Words cannot express the loss I feel to this very day.

Now as I age I am learning that the inner-beast, as I now know it to be “passion”, changes as life progresses. I have to find new endeavors because of where my life and my body’s health are taking me. Today I find passion, color and creativity in “words”. I love to write. I can reach deep down inside of myself and pull out the very emotions, the feelings that once, as a little girl, made me bounce around and act like the fool my mother felt like in front of the neighbors! Or, I can pull out the dark side of myself and describe the deep hurt I feel each time I remember growing up in a dysfunctional family who didn’t understand me. Or I can reach into the corner that contains memories of my “daddy” who “got me” and propelled me to be the person I am today. No matter what I’m feeling at any given moment, there’s a story to tell. And I’m grateful I have that passion in which to draw upon.

But the one most important thing about writing that I cherish most of all is the ability to connect with people; in its own way writing allows a person to show love. Writing and using words gives us the ability to reach out to people in times of need, hurt, happiness, confusion, emergencies and all sorts of other times. It doesn’t matter if it’s a little text message, a “Tweet”, a short blog, a long story, a short story, a book, a long novel, a love letter, a “Dear John” letter, a eulogy, an obituary, a birth announcement, a marriage announcement, a report card, a graduation certificate, they all contain words, important words, that say something about “love” or the lack thereof.  But no matter how you look at it, almost all forms of communication say something about love in the form of “caring”, even the most academic of books some kind of “caring” exists and that means that someone has a “passion” for what they did to create what they wrote about.  So, for me, writing is my “flavor” of passion for this time period in my life.

In the end, “passion” is everywhere you look. For me, it has followed me all of the way through my life. Yes, at times I have had to look pretty hard to find it, or should I say, keep it alive. The busyness, and sometimes the monotony of life has always had a way of squelching it, and I think that is so true for almost all of us. But if we try, really try, we will find that passion really never left, it just took on a different “face” at different times in our life and we didn’t recognize it.

What is your passion today? Is it the same as it was a year ago, five years ago, even twenty? Or has it changed? Is it time for an overhaul in your passion department? Is it time for a fresh, new bundle of passion to come your way? Do you need to re-ignite your passion? What is your “flavor” of passion for your life right now?

The Command to Love

“36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40KJV

It is incredibly important that we begin with that passage from the Bible. And it is equally important that we use the King James Version. We are about to embark on a wonderful journey through the Strong’s Concordance of the Bible where we will find why it is so vitally important that we learn to love ourselves first, before we even attempt to love anyone else.

Do you think Jesus loved himself? Do you think it was necessary that Jesus loved himself? I believe so in answer to both questions. I have thought long and hard about those questions. I have not made a snap decision in answering either of those questions. Hence my post; I want to share with you my deepest feelings, and findings about what my heart truly rests upon in knowing how I am supposed to feel about my own self worth, and what I am supposed to believe in my mind about my own existence in relation to those I share this planet with. Mine is my own unique experience, but so is yours. And I hope you come away from reading this understanding that, while you have a very unique experience of your own on this planet, each of us are equally valid and desirable, having worth beyond measure simply because we exist, you included.

Let’s break it down.

The first commandment is to love our Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our mind. That’s a pretty tall order, but obviously it can be done, or Christ would not have asked us to do so.  And we hear so often now, “all means all” so that doesn’t leave any room for “some”, therefore I will not labor the point of “how much”. What I will labor upon are the “parts” of us we are to use to love God, our heart, our soul and our mind. Let’s begin with our heart, which most of us will recognize as the deepest part of our being, or as Strong’s will define for us as “the center of all physical and spiritual life”[G2588]. Our heart clearly defines how we continue, or cease to exist. Next in line is our soul. Strong’s defines our soul as “the breath of life”[G5590], otherwise known as our spirit. Finally, our mind, and Strong’s defines our mind as “the faculty of understanding, feeling and desiring” [G1271].  So if we were to rewrite verse 37 it might read something like, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy center of all physical and spiritual life and all of thy breath of life and all of thy faculty of understanding, feeling and desire.” WOW! Obviously we are to love God with everything that is within us and with all of our capability as if our very life depended upon our love for Him! This is the true meaning of “fervency”.

And the second commandment is like it. Really? Like it?

“To love our neighbor as our self”, this is where it gets really muddy. And I think it gets muddy for most of us. It’s really easy to understand that we must love God. I mean, God is God. You know all powerful, mighty and all that stuff. But how do we justify loving little old us, all of the minions? Well, we are commanded to do just that. And I don’t think we could ever justify, or rationalize doing so if we had not been commanded to do it by our great friend, Jesus. But we were, so we have to figure out how to do it.

So, our “neighbor” as Strong’s defines the term can be understood in three different ways according to who is doing the defining. Generally speaking “neighbor” is just casually a “friend”. Well, you and I both know that I may consider one person a “friend” and another person an “enemy” simply because of my own experiences with any given person, so that term is very subjective based on my own prejudices. Another definition given by Strong’s is “according to the Jews, any member of the Hebrew Nation”. Well, then that certainly excludes a lot of people, doesn’t it? Then the last and final definition given by Strong’s, and of course is the definition I like to believe is the definition most widely accepted because it is Christ’s definition, is “any other man (person) irrespective of nation or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet”. So I’m going with that definition because I am a “follower of Christ”, a “Believer” and I don’t have any other perspective in which to write from. (My apologies to anyone who may be reading this from any other point of view, I love you too and value you and your opinion.)

And then, who is “thyself”? Christ told us to “love our neighbor as thyself”.  Often as Believers we just casually skip over the part about loving others as we love ourselves. We just think about how we are supposed to love everyone else. We think how difficult it is to love everybody else, oh but how difficult is it to really love our own selves? THAT is the hardest of all, isn’t it? And I’m not talking about in a narcissism kind of way of loving; I’m talking about the real kind of Christ-centered way. Yeah, you read that right, the kind of way that Christ loves. The kind of way I believe even Christ had to learn to love himself before he could properly love anyone outside of himself…oh boy, am I hitting on some nerves now???

Yes, I truly believe that Christ had to learn how to properly love himself before he could properly love any other human being the way God wanted him to with an all embracing kind of love that doesn’t separate or segregate based on any type of human condition or factor.

So who is the “thyself”? Strong’s takes us on a long journey before we arrive at the root word for “thyself”. And the root word is where I like to go if there is any room for doubt or any confusion as to what the King James Version of the Bible is really attempting to get across to its readers. On my journey through Strong’s in finding the most accurate meaning of thyself, and how it is used in this particular verse, I found  the word “you” and I also found the words “he”, “she” connected with “air” as in “blowing about”.  Now you need to understand how my mind works. I try to connect the dots in my research. And when I connect all of these dots I simply arrive at the fact that “you, him, her and all of us are all interconnected in the whole” and I can see Christ standing there “blowing” his arms about in “the air” as if to say “all of you need to learn to love yourselves as much as I have learned to love myself so that you can love one another.” Really, I don’t think this is too far of a stretch in the imagination. I mean do any of us really know what all of that time alone Christ spent with God was all about? What is our time alone with God all about? I know I spend a great deal of time pleading to God to help me “learn to love others more unconditionally”. Doesn’t that begin with learning to be more accepting of our own faults and weaknesses? I think so. If we are so critical of ourselves how can we possibly understand and be forgiving of others fragilities? We can’t. We cannot be our own foe on one hand and a true friend to others on the other hand. That is living the life of a double-minded person.

So if we were to revise verse 39 it would sound something like, “And the second is like unto it, You will love any other person irrespective of nation or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet as you, him and her as the inter-connected whole”. Again, I say, “WOW!”

Then verse 40 it clearly states that “all” of the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. I have already stated that “all means all, and that’s all, all means”, so I will not labor upon that verse. It’s as clear as it can possibly be in my opinion. Although I do have another post in me regarding the fact that I do not believe we live in the Old Testament any longer…but that’s another post for another day.

Okay, as Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC would put it, “It’s time for the Rewrite”:

Matthew 22:36-40 according to how I have interpreted it in today’s language of love:

Remember, this is a commandment, it’s a commandment of love, but it’s still a commandment.

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 “Jesus said unto him, You will love the Lord your God with all of your center of all physical and spiritual life and all of your breath of life and all of your faculty of understanding, feeling and desire.” 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 “And the second is like it, You will love any other person irrespective of nation or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet as you, he and she as the inter-connected whole”.  40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

For myself, even though that is the longer version, seeing it written out in long form, makes more sense to me. It helps me understand just how important it is to understand that I have both a duty and an obligation to view life from a broader sense of responsibility to myself, my family, my neighborhood, my country and ultimately the world in which I live. It makes me realize that I am a real part of the Whole and that ALL people are my brothers and sisters. I don’t have the luxury of parsing, separating and segregating those who I feel uncomfortable around. But quite the opposite, it is MY responsibility to help all people I come in contact with feel comfortable around me. Isn’t this what Jesus did? He had to become comfortable in his own skin so that others would feel comfortable around him. It’s time we do the same. It begins with learning how to love our own self.