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Taking the two great commandments to heart: love as the most ancient law

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At its core, caring for creation is about loving our global neighbor, because the poor suffer the most from the degradation of the earth. — Shane Claiborne

You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart. — WH Auden

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.— Jane Goodall

SONGS about LOVING each OTHER (our NEIGHBORS):

Songs about LOVING the EARTH:

As I Walked Out One Evening

— W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

POEM by Elizabeth Tambasci

You can sit with us. You can live beside us.
You can play your music. You can listen to mine.
We can dance together. We can share our food.
We can keep an eye on each other’s kids.
We can teach each other new languages.
We can respect traditions. We can build new ones.
You can ask for a cup of sugar. You can ask for directions.
You can tell me when things are hard.
You can tell me when beautiful things happen.
We can listen to stories.
We can disagree. We can agree.
We can come to understandings. You can wear what you want.
You can pray as you feel compelled to.
You can love who you want.
You can sit with us.
― Elizabeth Tambascio

Love Like Salt — Lisel Mueller

It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher
It goes into the skillet without being given a second thought
It spills on the floor so fine we step all over it
We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
It breaks out on our foreheads
We store it inside our bodies in secret wineskins
At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.

Tikkun Olam: In Jewish teachings, any activity that improves the world, bringing it closer to the harmonious state for which it was created. Tikkun olam implies that while the world is innately good, its Creator purposely left room for us to improve upon His work. All human activities are opportunities to fulfill this mission, and every human being can be involved in tikkun olam—child or adult, student or entrepreneur, industrialist or artist, caregiver or salesperson, political activist or environmentalist, or just another one of us struggling to keep afloat. — Chabad.org

Love Your Neighbor

You can be a follower of Muhammad or Jesus or Buddha or whomever. Always, they said that the most essential factor is to love your neighbor. And to love you. — Leo Buscaglia

Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.’ — Anne Lamott

You shall love your neighbor With your crooked heart, It says so much about love and brokenness — it’s perfect. ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

To be truly good means being a good neighbor. . . . And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers … Everybody is my neighbor!… Everybody is my brother! … We’re all connected. ― Brian D. McLaren

… teaches us to love ourselves in a wholesome manner by loving our neighbor. Indeed, even by loving our enemies – at least by trying to learn to love them, and by believing that it is right to do so. With grace this is possible. — Michael O’Brien

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race. — Maya Angelou

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. — Willa Cather

Spread love everywhere you go: First of all in your own house … let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness. — Mother Teresa

“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But…the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”   ― Martin Luther King Jr.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal … your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses … for in him also Christ ‘vere latitat’ – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality. — John Locke

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Love & Care for Self

When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do. – John O’Donohue

Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean me first, it means me too. – L.R. Knost

In dealing with those who are undergoing great suffering, if you feel “burnout” setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best, for the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself. The point is to have a long-term perspective. – Dalai Lama

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. – John Steinbeck

Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness. – Deborah Day

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves. – Nathaniel Branden
 
Self-discipline is self-caring. – M. Scott Peck

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation … – Audre Lorde
 
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. – Jack Kornfield

People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self-confidence through humility, forgiveness and inclusiveness. – Sanaya Roman

When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water. – Benjamin Franklin
 
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. – Anne Lamott
 
Carve out and claim the time to care for yourself and kindle your own fire. – Amy Ippoliti
 
Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch. – Parker J. Palmer
 
The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.  – Chuang Tzu

Self Care is the secret ingredient to Soldier care in a recipe that yields many servings of effective leadership. – Donavan Nelson Butler

On Loving God

When the worst finally happens, or almost happens, a kind of peace comes. I had passed beyond grief, beyond terror, all but beyond hope, and it was thee, in that wilderness, that for the first time in my life I caught sight of something of what it must be like to love God truly. It was only a glimpse, but it was like stumbling on fresh water in the desert, like remembering something so huge and extraordinary that my memory had been unable to contain it. Though God was nowhere to be clearly seen, nowhere to be clearly heard, I had to be near him—even in the elevator riding up to her floor, even walking down the corridor to the one door among all those doors that had her name taped on it. I loved him because there was nothing else left. I loved him because he seemed to have made himself as helpless in his might as I was in my helplessness. I loved him not so much in spite of there being nothing in it for me but almost because there was nothing in it for me. For the first time in my life, there in that wilderness, I caught a glimpse of what it must be like to love God truly, for his own sake, to love him no matter what. If I loved him with less than all my heart, soul, and will, I loved him with at least as much of them as I had left for loving anything…
       I did not love God, God knows, because I was some sort of saint or hero. I did not love him because I suddenly saw the light (there was almost no light at all) or because I hoped by loving him to persuade him to heal the young woman I loved. I loved him because I couldn’t help myself. I loved him because the one who commands us to love is the one who also empowers us to love, as there in the wilderness of that dark and terrible time I was, through no doing of my own, empowered to love him at least a little, at least enough to survive. And in the midst of it, these small things happened that were as big as heaven and earth because through them a hope beyond hopelessness happened. “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and for evermore.”…
      The final secret, I think, is this: that the words “You shall love the Lord your God” become in the end less a command than a promise.” ― Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces

Love of God is not a thing which we produce in ourselves by excessive brooding or by self-hypnotism or by any other method. It is a permanent flame, slowly burning in the caverns of all our hearts. […] The basis of all religions is this love of God. For if this love of God were not vital to us, all that the great prophets have been trying to preach would have been unreal and futile. If it were not a real experience which in some sense is shared by us all, an experience which ennobles us and raises us far above the selfish pettinesses of life, no prophet and no religious deed would be able to appeal to our higher natures and establish the claims of religion. ― Surendranath Dasgupta, Hindu Mysticism

A necessary condition for interior peace, then, is what we might call goodwill. We could also call it purity of heart. It is the stable and constant disposition of a person who is determined more than anything to love God, who desires sincerely to prefer in all circumstances the will of God to his own, who does not wish to consciously refuse anything to God.  ― Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart

… the test case for love of God is love of neighbour. The test case for love of neighbour is love of enemy. Therefore, to the extent we love neighbour and enemy, to that extent we love God. And to the extent we fail to love neighbour and enemy, we fail to love God. “Love” (agapao) is … action verb that constantly reaches out to embrace as friends, draw a circle of inclusion around neighbour and enemy (agape is the noun form, almost invariably referencing God’s unconditional love …). Therefore, the ultimate theological bottom line is: God is all-inclusive love. Period. ― Wayne Northey

On Loving Creation

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.
—Leo Tolstoy

You are called to care for creation not only as responsible citizens, but as followers of Christ! — Pope Francis

The Earth is what we all have in common. —Wendell Berry

God intends …. our care of Creation to reflect our care for the Creator. — John Stott

He that plants trees loves others besides himself. —Thomas Fuller

The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. — Lady Bird Johnson

The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. — Pope John Paul II

The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard. —Gaylord Nelson

What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on. —Henry David Thoreau

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.—Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for. —Ernest Hemingway

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it. —Barry Commoner

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. —Barbara Ward

Taking the two great commandments to heart: love as the most ancient law
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