JC's helper: Defining "Love"

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Defining "Love"

Someone responded with an email with these few lines about "love".

Love:

Is a feeling that you feel when you are going to feel a feeling that you never felt before.
Is an itch near the heart that is hard to scratch.
Is a feeling of attraction between two people that grows and expresses itself in the unselfish desire of each for the total well being of the other.

2 comments:

Anthony said...: Well, your someone has hit a snag there with "unselfish desire" -- two terms which can't co-exist.

I suggest that there is no such thing as "unselfish" love between two people, particularly in the man-woman relationship. It's a value-for-value arrangement (even if the value you receive is something you can't or won't recognise).; July 16, 2009 at 5:29 PM
Dave Brown said...: I can understand your comment and to an extent agree....and for me I suspect it may be true... but... I just took a funeral for a woman whose husband has spent the last few years supporting her, assisting her, even dressing her. He was committed to looking after her as much as he was able. She could not really even converse very fluently. Little hope of selfish gain in the relationship, but love was still given. My last sighting of her was when she was in hospital sitting beside her bed. Her husband was sitting on the bed, silently holding her hand. Life was tough for her, but he was still "with her" in love. I met another man who wife has lost her marbles and is in residental care. He goes every day to help feed her, and to take her out for some outing. Love - "unselfish desire for the good of the other"?; July 27, 2009 at 11:02 PM

The Blog's title

I am a Workplace Chaplain to the NZ fireservice.

At the firestation every time one man sees me he yells, "Here comes JC's helper!". I guess I am happy to be called just that... "Jesus' helper". I am a follower of Jesus.
A a quote from Dave Andrews in his book, "Not Religion but Love".
"Being a devotee of Jesus is not a matter of subscribing to a certain set of dogmas, obeying rules and regulations, and getting others to subordinate themselves to them.

The essence of being a devotee of Jesus is to live in sympathy with God as Jesus did; feeling the throb of God's heartbeat, and teaching our hearts to learn to beat in sync with the love that sustains the universe.

It means developing our capacity to sense intuitively what causes love pleasure, and what causes love pain, and doing everything we can to enhance the pleasure, and diminish the pain."

I love this charter.

The Charter for Compassion

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.