Love, Love, Love

Jimi Hendrix said that “when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” He didn’t say “if”!

There was a time the world lived without war. There was a time the world lived in relative peace. For proof, I offer you “The Chalice and Blade” by Riane Eisler, one of the most important books of this past century. I mention this because sometimes people today have a hard time believing we can move away from violence and fear, and into love, cooperation, empathy, and service to each other.

This presidential election has been a wake-up call for many of us, including me. The forces of fear and hatred have been given license to act out. Meanwhile, I’m hoping the people who believe in peace, love, and mutual respect will also be given a license to act out: to find whatever they’re called to do in service to others.

Those of us who have enough, I believe, have an even greater duty to share with those who do not have enough. It has only been since the 1960’s that poor people have been blamed for being poor, which is one more strategy the rich uses to separate us from each other, and skirt the blame which rests on their shoulders and their hearts. The Dalai Lama wrote this piece that was published in the New York Times on Nov. 4th: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/dalai-lama-behind-our-anxiety-the-fear-of-being-unneeded.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 – We were born to serve!

In this patriarchal dominator society in which we all live, there are stratas of money, of power, of position. The rich keep getting richer, and the poor lose more every day. Those of us in between have the opportunity to share: our time, our energy, our resources, our money. As Mother Teresa once said, if you can’t feed a hundred people, feed one person.

I have been reading YES! Magazine almost since its inception 20 years ago – because I love learning what you all are doing in service to each other and the planet. We need each other’s ideas and encouragement. You can sign up for their free e-newsletter at http://www.yesmagazine.org.

I leave you with a most important message from the International Council of Indigenous Grandmothers, a group of 13 grandmothers from around the world. They wrote this 3 days after the presidential election, and I find these words comforting and inspiring (I can’t find it online, so here it is in its entirety):
“Let us explain some things. You have elected, not a man, but a “moy” to lead you. He is a boy in an old man’s body. Moys are a combination of man and boy, but mostly boy. They are large and have loud voices so people mistake them for men, but they are not men. A man thinks of the common good while a moy has not learned to think of anyone but himself. He has not fully developed and is still a child.
“The time you are living in is called the age of destruction,” they said, “the Kali Yuga. It is the lowest point. At this time evil comes to the surface to be destroyed. This dark-age takes place just before the arrival of the in-coming Golden Age, so today you are watching out-of-balance Yang energy creating destruction all over your planet. This IS the Kali Yuga. You have heard and read about it and now it comes.
“Your country has just elected a moy to be its next president. Russia as well as Syria are already run by moys, while Africa is overrun by them, each moy creating havoc in his area of that continent. The Philippines is run by a moy and so are several other countries. Is it any wonder that the world is lurching from crisis to crisis?
“This is what is happening on earth now and because it is, you must learn to cope with this energy. You cannot reason with it because it is entirely destructive. Instead you must hold steady within yourself and observe its wild behavior from a position of power. If you do this, it will not be able to feed on you. Your steadiness will help contain its rapacious energy and it will not be able to do as much damage as it would otherwise.
Call on us, call on the Net of Light and hold Sacred Space. Be mindful of who you are! You are a great being, here on earth to occupy a steady helping hand to the helpless. Within yourself you carry the great holding power of Yin. Call on it now. Live with it. Be as you were born to be.
“We ask one more thing of you. At this time reach out to one another in service. Many are suffering now. Feed the hungry, visit people in hospitals and prisons, provide shoes to those who need them, help the animals. If each of you plunge into one activity of service, together you will do great good, turning many hearts to light. Find a service project for yourself. We ask this of you because we know who you are. You are our hands and hearts on earth. You are greatness itself.”

Here is the Grandmothers’ website: http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org/