More To The Mystery

If we are born fortunate, parents are our first mentors in love. Yet they got their mentoring from others, grandparents, great-grandparents and teachers back through a hundred generations to ancestors who first heard of the one many consider the original mentor teaching love, he who must have learned it from his parents. 

Luke 14:26.

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

These words are attributed to Jesus, who said no such thing since he didn't speak English. If he said anything like that in his own language, he would be remembered as our mentor in cultish obsession and family abandonment. I'm not convinced, although many have been, as we can judge from the conflicted history of Christianity. Although I dissent, this scripture does mean something even to me, an unrepentant heretic.

Here is what I think about it. At the very least, devotion to one object of love implies neglect of others. We exist in tension between boundless wants and limited capacity, with the necessity of choosing what we shall love more. While we care for the beloved, we neglect the less loved and do harm, even unintentional harm.

We cannot avoid doing harm because we we are consumers within a finite system. The best we can do is respect that system, understand its complexity and limitations, take no more than we need, and repair the damage as we go. All of that is somewhat possible, as demonstrated by ancient cultures that regarded the Earth as sacred and survived ten thousand years or more before the arrival of self-important settlers. Now we begin to wake up from a dream of entitlement and privilege. Reluctant to relinquish what fuels our affluence, we discover that we have exceeded the regenerative capacity of the earth and are rushing to disaster. 

We have forgotten that before humanity arrived with our big brains, endearing but helpless infants, and absolute reliance on mutual support, long before there were Mummies and Daddies, friends and kings, scholars and scientists, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers to keep us prospering, we were children of a chaotic and dangerous universe from which humanity emerged with evolving advantages. When we clever ones came, driven by the motives of pleasure and pain, we learned to tip the balance toward pleasure. If we got it right, we told others what worked and the advantage accumulated. Advantage continues to accumulate until the grace is all gone because in loving ourselves more we used up what we loved less. 

There is a chance for the children to do better than we have done by caring for what we have neglected, exploring the mystery with humility and expansive love.

What Are We Missing?
What is love? 
What should we love?
Is love ever wrong? 
Is there more to the mystery? 

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