We saw the movie Invictus today. It’s a powerful example and illustration of how the quiet, generous, inclusive, relentless power of love and forgiveness can transform lives and nations. There’s a shocking simplicity to the impulse and exercise of love: it proceeds from something unfettered, divine. Nothing can temper it, nothing can kill it. Love that is love has no capacity but to love, illumine, embrace, nurture, unite, appreciate, honor, delight, respect, comfort, assure, affirm, acknowledge, celebrate…it is borderless, boundless, infinite. It multiplies when shared. It washes, redeems, restores, dissolves, dispells all that is unlike itself. It calls us to it. It calls us home. It sings our names. It breathes a fire from within the heart that bridges all divides, leaves no scars, awakens the grandeur, holiness, fullness of who we are.

Recently The Christian Science Monitor posted an article called Ten Martin Luther King Jr Quotes. Here are three:

• Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
• I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
• Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Mighty, radical words that point to the spirit of true warfare, the internal and universally transformative dynamics of divine Love. Jesus taught it, lived it, showed us what we could do. Paul’s life illustrated this–he exchanged the politics of hate and misunderstanding for the living, healing power of love. He wrote: “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Nineteenth century spiritual pioneer, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote: “I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power.”

The kind of empowerment that love brings doesn’t require money, power, connections: it is an unquellable, undeniable spiritual impulse born of our oneness with God, Love. When heeded, lived, expressed, exercised, it can change the dynamics of any situation, any moment. Always available, undepletable: it is the most profound equalizer–rising within us to sweep the world up in its generous, all-encompassing embrace.

This song by Dar Williams says it so well:

We could pretend that we’re walking on petals and light, golden light
Flaunting our love like a dance step mastered, turning from left to right
But after all the colored lights are gone
Time will leave the ashes and the dawn
You rise and meet the day

I’m watching you go, it’s like spying on hope ever onward with more to burn
Giving your hands and your heart to the wheel of the world, though it fights each turn
But you do not give up so easily
That’s how I know you won’t surrender me
You rise and meet the day
It’s all I need, it’s all I need to know, it’s all I need to know

And I love you all the time
I had always feared that some gloomy ingratitude would seize me
But you have held the dream like every morning finds
A way to hang the sun up in the sky
And now I think I have it too The greatest part I learned from you
You rise and meet the day

And I can see kids, maybe yours, maybe not, oh, I can hear what they’ll say
Laughing at pictures with the old-fashioned hats and the clothes that we’re wearing today
And they will know the true and humble power
Of love that made it through the darkest hour
You rise and meet the day
It’s all I need, it’s all I need to know, it’s all I need to know