The refrain from the Beatles song – maybe it has more application today than ever before for bringing peace…
(Those who nostalgicly would like to listen to the song again, here is a link! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7xMfIp-irg)
The year was 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write and perform a song for the first BBC live worldwide broadcast to five continents. It should be a simple message, something that unites all people… It was also at the height of the Vietnam War. Love and Peace was a prominent and continuing message of the generation of the 1960’s. The messages had a great resonance amongst the young. You had the feeling that something new was being born at that time in the consciousness of people, and this was a reflection of it. And the song, “All you need is love”, was a great hit. It was live broadcast on June 25th, 1967. Some were critical of the ‘simplistic message’, saying it was typical of the idealistic slogans of the flower power young. John Lennon, in an interview a few years later, saw it differently:
“I think if you get down to basics, whatever the problem is, it’s usually to do with love. So I think “all you need is love” is a true statement. It doesn’t mean that all you need to do is put on a phony smile or wear a flower dress and it’s going to be all right. Love is not just something you stick on posters or stick on the back of your car, or on the back of your jacket or on a badge. I’m talking about real love… Love is appreciation of other people and allowing them to be. Love is allowing someone to be themselves, and that’s what we do need.” John Lennon, 1971
Fifty-six years later we are in the midst of a war in Europe — though centred in Ukraine, it draws in other countries and superpowers and has the potential for developing into a much greater conflagration, unless…
This is where the theme comes back. What will it take to find peace? There is a great power in love, if we not take it as an abstract word, or with the well-quoted judgement, ‘love makes blind’. That is very one-sided. Love in its true capacity, if we can humbly say so, is one of immense understanding and empathy for the other, of being able to truly put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, of acting selflessly for the sake of the well-being of others. Not out of greed, nor selfishness. It is indeed something spoken of in religions, but it is not ‘religious’. Rather, it is deeply human, and if someone is behaving inhumanly, it is invariably that they are not acting out of love for the other. It is something, though, that cannot simply be taught; it has to be realised in each one of our own hearts as an individual. It cannot take place through compulsion; it can only come as a free deed. If I am forced to do something for another, then it is not out of love.
One could go on describing it, and one senses the huge potential that love brings for humanity, and one also senses the huge challenges. It certainly becomes very much applicable to our current trying times, where you see so much done out of self-interest, or greed for power and money. In mega-businesses such as BigPharma, in the World Economic Forum with policies based on boosting profits for the already rich, in politics where so much smacks of self-interest, regrettably even in science where much research is not done for the well-being of humanity but funded by industry for increasing profits for shareholders. That is indeed very far from the quality of love.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 in the Bible writes very inspiringly about love, in his ‘Hymn to Love’. It is very relevant now, 2000 years later. Part of it is reproduced below. For the full text and a further discussion on the theme of love, we found an interesting and inspiring essay at this web page: https://onespiritalliance.net/a-focus-on-love-3/.
The emphasis is not on love as part of a religion but a universal human quality to be striven for. Maybe, hopefully, in the striving we will realise its potential for bringing a greater peace…
THE HYMN TO LOVE
Yet I will show the way which is greater than all others.
If I speak out of the Spirit with the tongues of men and of angels: if I am without love, then my speaking remains as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And if i had the gift of prophecy and could speak of all mysteries and could impart all knowledge and, further, had the power of faith which removes mountains; if I am without love, then I am nothing. And if I were to give away everything that is mine, and lastly were to give away even my body for burning, if I am without love, then all is in vain.
Love makes the soul great
Love fills the soul with healing goodness
Love does not know envy,
It knows no boasting,
It does not allow a falseness,
Love does not harm that which is decent,
It drives out self-seeking,
Love does not allow the inner balance to be lost,
It does not bear a grudge,
It does not rejoice over injustice,
It rejoices only in the truth.
Love bears all things,
Is always prepared to have faithful trust,
It may hope for everything and is all patient.
If love is truly present, it cannot be lost…
We find permanence which bears all future within it in the exalted triad:
In faith,
In hope,
And in love.
But the greatest of these is love.