Love is the answer …. now what is the question?

My island home of Jamaica is facing a political crisis the likes of which it has never seen. Frankly, the crisis has been brewing and escalating for decades.  But we have managed to stay in a place of denial, warmed by the lovely sea and mountain breezes, blinded by the hot, bright sunlight, comforted by the gorgeous landscape and entertained by the energy, spirit and vitality of the Jamaican people.  The beauty that is Jamaica has masked for decades the horror of our politics.  At last, we have reached a crisis (or have we?  Time will tell …).  And in a crisis, everyone is panicked and thinking the worst.

Last Friday morning, I opened my little Daily Word magazine to the day’s reading which was entitled “Love is the answer”.  It ends with a reading from the Bible “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” – Matthew 5:44

WOW!  Here was my answer on the day that I needed it.  LOVE. Love is THE answer. Love is the ONLY answer.

So I decided that just for that day, just for this moment, I would stay in this space of “Love is the answer.  Love is the ONLY answer”. Any question that someone asked me, any question I asked myself, I would answer “LOVE”.

Having posted this on Facebook one of my friends then decided to test me:   “What is the opposite of peace, harmony and unity”.  I must admit I was at a loss for a few moments.  And then I remembered that love is the ONLY answer so I responded “LOVE”.  Ding!  It felt right.  It is the right answer.  But how could love be the opposite of peace, harmony and unity?  Love IS peace, harmony and unity, so it can’t be opposite of those things.  Well, with love there ARE no opposites.  When we are in a place of being love, of knowing that everything is love, then how can there be anything unlike love?

But what about violence, murder, torture, hate, envy, greed, jealousy, you may ask – are those love?  How can those be love?  That’s the difficulty we face.

When those things appear, they signal that someone is not seeing and being love.  Just because someone doesn’t see love doesn’t mean that love is not present.  Love is always there – at any moment.  Love is like light – it’s always there – even when it seems dark, there is light.  That is why even the tiniest opening in darkness lets in light.  We have all heard stories about gunmen who are about to pull the trigger but stop, hearing the loving voice of their mother or grandma.  That was love coming forth from behind darkness.  The solution to violence, murder, etc. is to love – it cannot be more violence, murder, etc. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” said Gandhi.  “Turn the other cheek” said Jesus.  What they were saying is that in the face of these ills, we must remain rooted in love.

Now, many of my dear readers will say – “Marguerite, easy for you to say – you are comfortably ensconced in Toronto where the murder rate is infinitesimal compared to Jamaica”.  Yes my dear friends, I am physically removed from the environment.  What I want to make sure is that I am not sending any negative energy to the situation.  For that would only be making it worse.  So I choose to send love and forgiveness instead.  Love is the answer.

One interesting observation, as I went through my “Love is the answer” day – I found myself asking different questions or asking questions differently.  Whenever I was asking a question, I stopped and rephrased it so that LOVE comfortably became the answer.  And magic and miracles started to appear when I started to ask different questions that could have LOVE as the answer.  Solutions, where there seemed to be none.  Actions where nothing prior had been taking place.

I decided to extend my “Love is the answer” day each day, knowing that in each day, in each moment i can choose to love and forgive, or i can choose to hate and fear. Difficult as we may think it is, the only solution is to love, for the latter cannot move us forward in a positive way.

Today, consciously choose love … when someone asks you a question, remember that the only answer is LOVE.