For Love’s Sake is the Universe Divided

12 Feb For Love’s Sake is the Universe Divided

Valentine’s Day gives us all permission to express our love with hearts and flowers, cards, and chocolates. It’s a tender, romantic holiday for some, but it also heightens the sense of loneliness for many who are single or isolated. But more than that, it can reduce love into a simple romantic notion rather than a deeply profound organizing principle for life itself.

We live in a time where much of what we love is threatened: especially the ability to gather together with friends, hug each other when we meet, and celebrate the connections we treasure. Hiding our smiles behind masks and social distancing, necessary as it is, heightens our feelings of being alone and separate.

The idea that separation is an illusion has become a spiritual cliché, yet our divisions have never been more apparent. We are living in a time of racial inequality, economic and gender divides, divisions between civilization and planet, and an increasingly pervasive information divide, where wide swaths of people believe completely different stories about reality, ripping apart families and whole communities.

Why so many divisions? Why now?

I recently attended an outdoor, socially-distanced gathering with old friends I hadn’t seen in months because of the pandemic. My heart swelled with the appreciation of seeing faces that were dear to me in a simple gathering of eight people. I realized that the separation had heightened my longing for connection, increased my appreciation of good friends, and made everything I had missed all the more precious.

The mind tends to fixate on contradictions. News pundits know this well as they heighten their stories in terms of conflict and sensationalism. The movie Social Dilemma spoke about how fake news receives six times as many clicks as real news, as it feeds on our longing for community and belonging.

The real contradiction is that the world of nature is unified, cooperative, and collaborative, yet we believe ourselves to be separate.

Love teaches us that there is no separation, yet perhaps it is better said that love longs to bridge that separation. What we take for granted becomes more valuable when it is lost or threatened. Our very longing bids the heart to open.

Take time this Valentine’s Day to think of what you miss the most. Let your heart focus on what you long for and begin to call it back to you. Imagine what it might feel like to be connected again, or perhaps for the first time to the essence your heart longs for.

Give someone a call you haven’t talked to in a long time, someone that might be feeling alone, lost, or suffering. Take a walk and appreciate the nature around you. Notice all the many relationships between plants and animals, sky and land, that surround you.

Our wounding and our suffering deepen the healing effects of love. They give us compassion, connection, and vulnerability. They are not something to shy away from, but something to embrace as universal to us all. In that embrace of our common humanity, the bonds of love are continually strengthened.

Thus for love’s sake is the universe divided.

+14

0