Love your neighbor as yourself

So someone asked Jesus, which is the greatest commandment, and he answered with two:

Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

I think a key to that second one may be the words “as yourself.” You have to have some love for yourself if you’re going to love your neighbor “as yourself.” And I think that explains a lot of the bad stuff in the world. People who loathe and mistreat their neighbors must be full of self-loathing, and their brutish behavior is their way of loving their neighbor the same way they (do not) love themselves.

And, you know? I had forgotten that Jesus was quoting from the Torah, the Old Testament, not just pulling those thoughts out of a hat.

“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” That’s Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

The second is a partial quote. The entire commandment in Leviticus 19:18 is, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” That kind of fleshes out the thought, doesn’t it?

I’m not the most devout guy in the world, and I don’t talk in these terms often, but I must say I think the world would be a better place if we adhered to those two commandments as much as possible. And from my glancing knowledge of other faiths, I think they’re more universal commandments that transcend Christianity.

Upon opening the gift

“Our life is not a problem to be solved; it is a gift to be opened.”

I had time to sit and read Wayne Muller’s chapters about Simplicity and Gratefulness on Thursday morning, and it seems I was in the proper frame of mind to receive the message. I feel like I could write for days, and then some, about much of it.

And almost none of it is new to me. A dear old friend, the late Lou O’Malley, once told us the secret to having a happy life is living with what you have, and here is Muller quoting Lao Tzu:

Be content with what you have;

rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize there is nothing lacking,

The whole world belongs to you.

Muller describes the desk of writer Frank Waters, a plain pine table with papers, pencils, and an old Olivetti portable typewriter, which moves me to write:

Always have a pen and paper. The electronics need to be charged, the desktop takes time to boot up. They all need to connect to Wi-Fi. The pen is always ready.

The essence of Muller’s chapter about gratitude is summed up in that sentence, “Our life is not a problem to be solved; it is a gift to be opened.” We spend so much time focused on what we lack — how life will be better if we can only fill that empty space — that we lose sight of the fullness everywhere else.

I have written that I work in a room surrounded by books — I once searched in vain online for the context of a Ray Bradbury quote, only to find it in a book full of essays sitting three feet above where I sat. And now, opening a book at random from a pile I nabbed at an estate sale because its title reminded me of a podcast I value, I find my heart opened to concepts I’ve known “headwise” for a long time.

Dorothy journeyed to Oz only to discover what she needed back at home. I keep looking for stuff only to find it was already here.

Instead of approaching life as a series of problems to solve, we need to look at our pile of gifts and start to unwrap them. Suddenly all that junk we were struggling with turns into the best present ever.

A siren passes

Ambulance Lights © Taina Sohlman | Dreamstime.com

Our home is just off the highway between Green Bay and Door County. It is not unusual to hear a siren passing by, an ambulance going to get a patient, or bringing a patient to hospital, as fast as they can.

An ambulance passes as I read and write. Someone is in crisis, while I sit and contemplate life and death.

Such a luxury.