Do you believe in peace? Do you believe in kindness? Do you believe in mercy? Do you believe in joy? Do you believe in love? Can you see it in your oppressor? Can you hope for goodness in the one who does evil to you? How about yourself? Can you see those qualities in you?
In the summer of 2013, months before I came back to my faith, I wrote down a prayer that I forgot I had written:
"i miss innocence, where there is absolute faith in the good of people and how to innately treat one another with gratitude, kindness, respect, and affection...
it hurts me to see that squashed; it has pained me to see it gone in me; it upsets me greatly that i have not been this
god, please forgive me for straying from what i believe in; i want to show the good i am and have in me, to everyone i come across"
At that time, I got to the point that I recognized that I saw no innocence around me, I doubted people’s motives, and was on the point of giving into complete cynicism. I did not want to live like that, it truly did pain me, and so my instinct was to pray by writing down the yearnings of my heart. (Any yearning of the heart is a prayer.) I didn’t even know I was praying and very quickly forgot that I had done such a thing.
The prayer was answered and I was soon reminded that there is goodness, that the virtues of charity, compassion, faith, gentleness, hope, humility, joy, kindness, light, love, mercy, modesty, patience, peace, purity, security, tranquility, trust, truth, understanding, and wisdom truly do exist in and of themselves and not only that, but that one can be graced with such virtues, such spirit, such goodness. These virtues are the driving factors in my spiritual life, they are my center, and they are the way of life. All these virtues, combined in their utmost perfection, equate love, true love, Divine Love – and if we take revelation seriously, that God is love, then all these components of love, these virtues are God. Anyone can invite these aspects of love into one’s whole being, into one’s soul, and be graced with the Highest Good.
If there is anything that we humans can agree on, regardless of what faith we live or lack of faith we proclaim, we all live with the same reality: there are ways to love and ways to hate. We can choose one or the other. We can become darkness, or we can become goodness (but more often than not, we are a combination of both at any given time). The way I know and understand Christianity is that this is our task: to become goodness, to become love, to become like God. Too often many people who profess Christianity get too tied up in what others are doing or not doing, they lose site of goodness and of God. This is true no matter what faith you are, if you look for the bad in others, you will see no goodness.
So if we bemoan the way the world is going, what insult and injustice this or that person says or does to another, why don’t you just try looking to goodness itself and invite it within you? It is a way to start spreading love in the world, to give birth to love, little by little. It is our responsibility. If you want peace, if you want love, invite peace and love and become peace and love. To some it sounds too easy, cheesy, and unbelievable, but this unbelief is exactly the problem and what prevents goodness from spreading. Belief is what makes your reality real. Believe! Believe in goodness, think goodness, see goodness anywhere you can, and importantly ask for goodness. Whatever faith you are, let’s do this so we may become love for the advancement of our world.
