*Hosea Ballou, b. 1771, American Unversalist Clergyperson & Theologian
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I, a mid-teenager, took my record albums and destroyed them with glee and zeal for living a pure life religiously. I stomped them on the walkway leading to our front porch. I was pleased with my show of devotion, as I stomped and broke with hands the once cherished albums.
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One of my faults earlier in life was too much zeal, and misguided zeal, in religion. Then, after a long period of rebellion against religion, I am still in process of finding balance - possibly, I never will, possibly that is the way it is meant to be, at least for me. My parents and maternal grandmother, indeed, were afraid I would literally lose my mind so fanatical I was religiously. But I would not listen.
An irony is now I much enjoy the same kind of “secular” music I destroyed that day. Then, I saw it as wise to eliminate it from my mind. Now, I see it as wise to enjoy, seeing the Divine in matters I once esteemed opposing holiness and rightness.
One of the albums I destroyed that day was a classic by Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive. Again, ironically, about twenty years later, I bought a CD of that same music.
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Amazing how our sense of right and wrong, wise and unwise, holy and unholy, … can change over time. And, also, how our zeal can take new shapes and expressions in contrast to other times.
I have witnessed a pervasive problem in religious persons and groups. That problem, in the thought of the Ballou citation above, entails zeal outdistancing love. I have repeatedly seen persons in the name of "God" and faith act zealously unkind, ungracious, and – in Christian terms – un-Christlike. Yet, let us not see this as only a religious problem; this same matter shows up in many diverse areas of human life.
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Zeal is never to be our guide. Love, in all things is to guide us, and Wisdom guides in the expression of Love.
Now, these three will remain always – trust, hope, and love. Yet, love is the eminent among these three.
*Christian New Testament, I Corinthians 13.13
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*Embracing the Light, Fe Langdon, Flickr
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*Lotus of the Heart is a Work of Arem Nahariim-Samadhi ~ a Hospice Chaplain, interspiritual author, writer, poet, and bicyclist. He is someone in love with Life and inviting others to that same ecstasy of Love ~ and, by the way, herein is nothing he claims as his own.
