Waves of Love

One of the songs I grew up with in church was called "You will know they are Christians by their love." Certainly Jesus' primary message was about love, but I think the problem a lot of people have with Christians and their religion as it is expressed over the centuries has to do with the disparity between what Christ preached and what Christians do.

And though I find some people very easy to love, I have to say that I, too, have my faults in this area, and definitely find some people very difficult to love (Dick Cheney comes to mind...).

Kornfield's book this morning was describing a particular loving-kindness meditation, in which you visualize love spreading to an ever widening circle of people, so I decided to try that this morning. And doing so, I realized that while I was in Italy I was often resentful of the hordes of tourists that came between me and the things I had come to Italy to see.

Which is pretty silly, since they had come to Italy for the same reason! And as I meditated, I found myself wishing I had included those hordes more in my pictures, instead of trying to shoot above and around them, because they really were part of the experience.

So here's the one shot I have that really gives a sense of the masses of humanity that decided to visit Rome this September. And I invite you to join me in sending out love to each of them; to visualize a wave of love that overflows from this fountain and washes all down that street to fill each of those beings with light.

Yes, it's an exercise, and somewhat mechanical. But the interesting thing is that loving that mass of humanity, or even just trying to imagine loving them, seems to result in my own heart opening and filling with love. And as they used to say in that silly cereal commercial I grew up with --

"Try it! You'll like it!"