In the Jewish calendar, Tu B'Av comes less than a week after Tisha B'Av. Our grieving hearts are broken open, and it is through this holiday of love that we begin the work of repair.
Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, Kol Haneshama Reconstructionist prayerbook
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Who are holy beings? They are beloved, clear of mind, and courageous. Raising their voices in constant gratitude. They marvel at every detail of life. Granting each other loving permission to be exactly who they are. When we listen for their sweet voices, we can hear the echo within our own souls. |
Raymond Carver
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And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. |
Questions for discussion:
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How do these texts resonate with you (or not)?
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What does it mean to you to feel beloved? How do you create that experience for yourself? For others?
(18) [God] upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, providing him/her with food and clothing.— (19) You too must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Excerpts from bell hooks, Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love
When we are accountable we eschew the role of victim and are able to claim the space of our individual and collective agencies. For many folks, especially those who are suffering exploitation and or oppression, that agency may seem inadequate. However asserting agency is always the first step in self-determination. It is also the place of hope. As we move away from dominator culture towards a liberatory culture where partnership and mutuality are valued. We create the culture wherein we can all learn to love . there can be no love where there is domination . And anytime we do the work of ending domination, we are doing the work of love.
This is always the measure of mindful practice—whether we can create the conditions for love and peace in circumstances that are difficult, whether we can stop resisting and surrender, working with what we have, where we are.
Fundamentally, the practice of love begins with acceptance—the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time. But for so many of us our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love.
Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp. Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness. We are healed. The Buddha taught that we can create a love so strong that, as Salzberg states, our “minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.” Such love is the foundation of spiritual awakening.
If we are to create a worldwide culture of love then we need ...concrete strategies for practicing love in the midst of domination.
(Thank you to Rabbi Sheila Weinberg for sharing bell hooks' insights)
- What does it mean to “love the stranger”? How is it different from the commandment “do not oppress the stranger”?
- For you, what is the connection between love and tikkun (repair)?
Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Kol Haneshama Siddur
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We are loved by an unending love. We are embraced by arms that find us even when we are hidden from ourselves. We are touched by fingers that soothe us even when we are too proud for soothing. We are counseled by voices that guide us even when we are too embittered to hear. We are loved by an unending love. We are supported by hands that uplift us even in the midst of a fall. We are urged on by eyes that meet us even when we are too weak for meeting. We are loved by an unending love. Embraced, touched, soothed, and counseled... Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices; Ours are the hands, the eyes, the smiles; We are loved by an unending love. |