Buddha said: "Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law." He said this about 600 years before Jesus was born. 

Peter said to [Jesus], “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven."






In the 1960's, Martin Luther King said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." 

The point is that these men came to the same conclusion after thinking and experiencing and thinking some more. They were not naive, superficial men. They were not fools or bumpkins who believed in impossible ideals that can't be realized by real people in the flow of real daily events. 

How I love the movie "Selma". And it is a true story. Love and wisdom in subtle balance. Until I saw that movie, I had no idea that King had the political savvy that he did. But then I looked up the facts, and found that the movie portrayal of him is no exaggeration. He was that smart as well as that compassionate and that determined. And then add non-violent. He will be seen as the greatest American of the twentieth century someday. I am certain of it.  

My point today is once again that the best wisdom of the world's religions (King was a Baptist Christian pastor, and I believe, an inspired man) coincides. The reason that a few of the world's thousands of religions have survived and flourished is that their values guide people to ways of life that - over millions of people and thousands of years - work. 

Love, in the end, is all that our lives are about and all that holds our communities together. Life itself makes little to no sense if it does not have love in it. It must end in death. Unlike other animals, we know that death is not just something that happens to other, unfortunate living things. It is waiting for all of us. So why don't we just end the anxious waiting and go there? As humans, we also know that we are capable of choosing to bow out of this life. 

We hang on for love. It is all that gives life flavor in the end. All pleasures and triumphs fade for the individuals who achieve and enjoy them. Look at the evidence of the real world. 

Can love solve the problems we now face? The spread of nuclear weapons? Global warming? I can't answer those questions definitively. I can only look back at history, at Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Lincoln, King, Saint Joan, and others like them. For certain, they would not be remembered as they are today if they had not had a belief in love that rose above the distracting ups and downs of their times. A dedication to their ideals that guided and informed their actions day by day.  

We can do this. We can make a better world. We just have to learn to believe in things that we cannot see.



                                                      "Joan of Arc"          (Lepage)