Reflections on ‘loving the world’ from Gospel of John: Lenten lectionary
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb
There are oceans and rivers enough to cross,
Enough to last till the end of time.
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No, not just for some but for everyone.
— Songwriters: Burt Bacharach / Hal David
Loving the World
Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element. ― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
Let us love the world to peace. — Eileen Elias Freeman
All the particles in the world are in love, and looking for lovers. — Attributed to Rumi
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God Who is sending a love letter to the world. — Mother Teresa
The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world. — Marianne Williamson
At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love. — Ray Bradbury
No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one’s partiality. — Wendell Berry
If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn’t inherent in the place but in your state of mind. ― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change
I love the world at 4 am. The streets are all mine. I don’t have to deal with traffic, and people’s bullshit. I don’t have to answer any calls or reply to any texts. I don’t have any responsibilities. No fights, no arguments, no hate, no love, no faith and no engagements. I can just be. Like we are meant to be. – Attributed to ‘Hedonist Poet’
Excerpts of Commentary on “For God So Loved the World” from Gospel of John chapter 3 (John 3:16)
Jesus articulates in this statement … that God is fundamentally a God of love, that love is the logic by which the kingdom of God runs, and that God’s love trumps everything else, even justice, in the end. — David Lose
… judgment … in John’s Gospel … represents your own moment of crisis of whether or not you will choose to enter into the life-sustaining relationship God provides … the intimacy God so desires with us here and now.— Karoline Lewis
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass (excerpts) — Mary Oliver
3. (excerpt)
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another. …
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty
I mean the ones that are thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the ush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Reflections from Psalm 139 & MLK Weekend: Being Human
Pink Moon — the Pond (excerpt) — Mary Oliver
… You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do —
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is unfolding
like a pair of wings, it is sparking
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees …
and now you are caught …
And that’s when it happens —
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
… And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
… in the moonlight, as it says
yes.
On Being Human
I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being. — Hafiz
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of being human. — Victor Frankl
Our existence was for the white man’s comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human. — Rosa Parks
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O [God], I am thine. — Deitrich Bonhoeffer
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. … Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. ― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living
You’ve got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you’ve got. ― Toni Morrison
Well, there is good news, and that is why they call it the gospel. The news is not that we are worse than we think, it is that we are better than we think, and better than we deserve to be. Why? Because at the very bottom of the whole enterprise is the indisputable fact that we are created, made, formed, invented, patented in the image of goodness itself … People … cannot take away from you the fact that you are a child of God and bear the impression of God in your very soul. — Peter Gomes
More than one writer calls Psalm 139 a creation psalm, but not one about the vast mysteries of the heavens and earth or even the marvelous workings of nature around us. This creation is God’s own ongoing work in bringing the human person to fullness of life, unwrapping the mystery of us and loving us all the while. — Kathryn Matthews
Just Imagine
Imagination opens up possibility, but sometimes we do not dare to imagine something as beautiful as God. — Nanette Sawyer, (in The Hyphenateds)
We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them. — Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
What a stunning vocation for the church, to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful – and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact. — Walter Brueggemann
From wonder into wonder existence opens. — Lao Tzu
From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ — Martin Luther King Jr., ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
On this day we commemorate Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and interracial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America. — Coretta Scott King
Commentary about the significance of this holiday from New York Times contributor Chris Lebron: What, To the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only skyImagine all the people living for today
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one