​Blog 477 – 11.26.2016

As a follow-up to yesterday’s blog on how I enjoy gathering with light-hearted people I thought I’d look at the root cause of why we often are so Heavy-handed with ourselves and others. I think it comes from a heavy heart and nothing makes the heart heavier than a lack of love for one’s self. Contrary to one opinion that the love of money is the root of all evil or even the cause of most problems I think the root of all of our problems can be traced to a lack of love for ourself.

If you are heavy handed with others it is because you are heavy handed with yourself. Yesterday I saw for the second time the movie in theaters now called, “Hacksaw Ridge.” It is a very touching movie in so many ways. In one scene the hero of a story as a young boy gets out of bed to go comfort his mother after a loud argument his dad had with her. He asks his mother, “Why does he hate us so much?” And she replies, “Oh he doesn’t hate us. He hates himself.” That is true for all of us. We cannot hate anyone without hating ourself first.

There is a term in psychology called projection where we project on others the things we do not like about ourselves and cannot face so we can attack them. I have said for years that any time I hear some one say things like, “I can abide anything but a liar” that I say to myself, there is a person who has a problem telling the truth. Everyone, without exception tells it wrong from time to time for a host of reasons but a person for whom that is their shameful secret sin it is a big deal when they see it in others. We judge others harshly because we are hard on ourselves. We have trouble loving others because we have trouble loving ourselves.

Let yourself off the hook and it is easy to let others off the hook. Love yourself and it is easy to love others. I hear people say all the time, “I can never forgive so and so for such and such.” And I think to myself, how sad, if you just loved yourself a little more it would be so easy. At the conclusion of one of my favorite movies, Unfinished Life, the chief characters played by Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are talking. Robert says, “Do you think the dead think about us?” Morgan replies, “Yes, I do. I even think they forgive us our sin and that it is easy for them.”

Jesus, our older brother and shining example, prayed for the men who were torturing him to death, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” He prayed that prayer not just for them but for all of us and I believe that prayer was eternally answered. God forgiving us was never really the problem nor is it today. Forgiving ourself has always been the real problem. We imagined we could hurt God, take something away from Him, be separate from Him. That never was nor ever could be true. But believing that we judged ourselves and others harshly and took on a burden we were never meant or made to carry,  judgement, and with it a very heavy heart.

Let go your heavy heart and let it and all its imaginary sins and slights sink into the sea of forgetfulness. Allow your true heart, the one He gave you and never took back to pump love throughout your being and out to everyone. Remember Who and Whose you truly are and you will be light-hearted almost giddy with love and joy not just for yourself but for everybody else.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White