A Call for Love
Dee
recently went into the post office to mail a package while I waited in
the car. She returned with tears in her eyes. She had encountered a
particularly nasty clerk who didn’t even want to tell her any optional
rates for mailing her package. Dee had to resist the temptation to argue
with the clerk or criticize her.
Then
the clerk stepped away for a moment and as she walked, Dee could see
that the woman was in great pain, physically and psychically. Her body
was stiff and bent, and her heart was obviously broken. The environment
in which she worked was oppressive, with flickering, humming fluorescent
lights, and a machine inside the office making an ongoing beep beep
beep like a truck’s backup signal. In that moment Dee’s attitude shifted
from resistance to compassion. The woman was older and Dee felt sad she
had to work at that age in a stifling environment to sustain herself.
A
Course in Miracles tells us that all human actions are either pure
expressions of love, or calls for love. Anyone who is upset, angry, or
nasty is in pain. Hurt people hurt people. No one at peace with him or
herself would do anything to hurt anyone else. The Course urges us to
not take the nastiness of others personally. Their dark actions are not
about you. They speak of that person’s consciousness. They are a call
for love.
There
is an African tribe in which when a woman knows she is pregnant, she
goes into the wilderness with some friends and together they pray to
hear the song of the child. When the women attune to the child’s soul
signature, they translate it into a chant and teach it to all the
villagers. When the child is born, the villagers gather and sing the
child into the world with his or her unique song.
The
villagers also sing the child’s song at significant transition point in
the child’s life, such as the first day of education, the adulthood
initiation, marriage, and eventually death. Yet there is one other time
when the tribe members sing the child’s song. If the child commits a
crime or socially aberrant act, he is placed at the center of the
village and everyone in the village gathers around him and sings his
song to him. They do not punish him. Instead, they realize that the
person has acted antisocially because he is in pain, disconnected from
his self and his song. The song reminds him who he really is, and calls
him to come home to himself.
All
of the ills of society are a result of a sense of disconnection with
self, others, and God. The answer to our problems, then, is to restore
connection, to regard fear-based acts as calls for love. In the movie
Legally Blonde, a young lawyer is assigned to defend a woman accused of
killing her husband. The lawyer eventually figures out that the woman is
innocent. “My client is an aerobics instructor,” she tells her
colleagues. “She has lots of endorphins running through her system,
which make her feel good. No one who feels good would need to kill
someone.”
You
have the power to heal by reframing hurtful actions—by others or
yourself—as a call for love. If you love as the antidote, you may
participate in a miracle. Louise Hay once asked me what I write when I
sign autographs in books. I told her what I write and then asked her
what she writes. “I just write "Love heals,'” she answered. Maybe that’s
all any of us need to write.
