The Answer Is Love
Love is the answer. No matter the problem, the answer is love. I believe that. I really do.
But today we’re talking about Earth Day and its theme for this year, climate change. What does love have to do with that? How can love help?
Not everyone thinks it will.
In July, I wrote about the Dirtbag Left, angry lefties who enjoy calling names and throwing hateful gibes into the virtual world as much as do reactionary Republicans. In his article about the digital nature of the presidential election, Kevin Roose quotes Mark Provost, a manager with the Other98%, as saying that Joe Biden could capitalize on the frustration and hostility that those on the left feel toward Donald Trump by being more rancorous himself. Provost says that “people just want to see a bully get smacked down.” [1] He suggests that Biden might even lose the election unless he gets a little nasty.
The American psyche loves a good thrashing. We root for the guy who’s on top.
Not everyone feels that way, of course. Some people prefer friendly discourse. But divisiveness has gotten so intense; we don’t seem to be able to talk to one another. How can we solve problems when all we do is fight?
What Is Love?
We could start by learning to love.
But what do we mean by love? Do we have to hug and kiss everyone, hold their hands, sing karaoke with them?
Of course not. Love is about honoring a person’s inherent worth, listening to her, understanding her. Love is patient and kind, long-suffering and forgiving. Yet love is also firm, even fierce, in its demand for justice. And love never gives up.
So how do we learn to love others? We learn to be honest and tender with ourselves.

The Eight “Bad Thoughts”
To help us learn how to love, let’s look at the eight bad thoughts developed by the fourth-century monk, Evagrius. They are gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, and pride. [2] Like the seven deadly sins, this list encourages us to look at ourselves and our behavior and make some changes.
As Kathleen Norris suggests in her book, Acedia, when we focus on our bad thoughts, we’re more likely to change than when we fret over our sins. [3] That’s because thinking about our sins tends to make us feel ashamed. If we believe sin is inherent in the human condition, we can feel hopeless about ever doing better. All we know how to do is grit our teeth and clamp down on our despicable urges, pushing them hidden inside until we no longer notice they are there. Then we project our shame onto others and learn to hate.
If we have bad thoughts, we can do something about them. Our behavior arises out of our thoughts. But while our behavior can be hurtful to others, our thoughts aren’t good or bad. They just are. Thus, we can focus on them without judging ourselves. Then we can learn to let them pass through without taking them seriously. Then we can choose how we want to behave.
How do we do this?
We pay attention. Thoughts are stories we tell ourselves about reality:
“Those people are bad. They did this and that to me. They should be punished. Life isn't fair. We deserve to take what we want. The world owes me.”
That doesn’t make them true. If we observe our thoughts without judgment, notice their coming and going, we can stop feeding those thoughts. We can see the lies for what they are.
Stopping the Internal Story
You see, our thoughts aren’t reality. They’re our interpretation of reality. They arise out of our emotions of gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, and pride. They also arise out of fear.
When we recognize this, when we pay attention to how our emotions and stories shift and change, we can stop judging. Once we do that, we might feel some compassion welling up in us, or a bit of gentle humor. We might come to understand that we are as imperfect as anyone else and that it’s okay. By observing without judgment, by witnessing with humility, we recognize the commonalities we have with others, even with those we abhor.
At times, I hate the people who snatch lifelines from the poor, who control rather than lead, who destroy our wilderness and pollute our waterways in the name of progress or jobs, who cannot see beyond their immediate greed, and who have no conception of the common good. Why should I love those who have forgotten how to love?
Yet when I notice that hatred, I realize it arises out of my pain. Besides, it doesn’t help me or the world. My anger and hatred do not change society. They do not restore our waterways or mountains. Nor do they change hearts. All they do is feed retaliation and aggression. Instead of fixing problems, they create new ones.
Looking Within
So should we all just notice our thoughts? Would that be enough to make everything better?
Of course not. Observation is a good first step, but it’s hard. Even if we can pay attention, it won’t help if we judge and blame ourselves. We need to watch without judgment. We need to watch with compassion.
How do we to do that? We find healers, read books, listen to podcasts, take classes, and practice, practice, and practice.
Then, once we learn to see what is inside us, we have to heal it. Our spirits are wounded. As children, we all got lost one way or another. Fear, anger, and resentment turned us inside out. Until we heal our hearts through prayer, counseling, meditation, dreaming, or other spiritual practices, we will tend to spread more pain. If we want to heal our planet, we must first heal ourselves.
With healing, our hearts grow grow more peaceful. When we feel peace in our hearts, we treat those around us more gently. We come to value relationships and tenderness rather than worldly power and unlimited wealth. Instead of seeking notoriety, we seek the joy that comes from love. Since we no longer need to force our will upon the world, we will stop destroying the planet and start taking care of it. We will become good stewards.
The Courage to Love
Yet noticing our thoughts and healing the hurts of our heart is not easy. The journey is long, often frightening, and can fill us with anxiety, sadness, and despair. That’s why we need a guide. After all, we will be looking at memories and beliefs and knowledge our conscious mind decided were too hurtful for us to accept. We rejected them because we thought that would keep us safe. To reclaim them takes courage.
Although we can never make conscious every story that lurks within our hearts and minds, the more we explore the self who lives within us, the better we will know who we are. The better we know who we are, the more we can respond to our feelings and our thoughts rather than being at the mercy of our unconscious drives.
Beneath the fear, anger, hate, pride, and despair we use to protect ourselves from ourselves, something warm and tender lies. Once we go to that deep place inside and discover we do not fall apart, we can start to trust. We can trust in the power of our vulnerability, in the wisdom of our frailty, in our hopes, our laughter, our community, our god. When we nurture that young and wounded part of ourselves, compassion arises. It becomes easy to forgive. And there, where it always was, waiting for us, will be love.
Speaking Against Injustice
So how will this save us? As the coronavirus threatens our sense of security and our economy falls apart, as the rising oceans imperil our cities and prime farmland dries up, how can love help us?
After all, love doesn’t stop a bullet. It won’t stop soldiers who are burning our village. Love won’t hold back a flood or fill an empty stomach. It won’t turn a narcissist into a saint, except maybe after years and years, though there’s no guarantee even then. Indeed, love an get us assassinated, like it did Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Oscar Romero.
You might argue that they weren’t killed because they loved, but because they spoke out against injustice. But there’s no difference. Love speaks out. That is part of what it is and what it does.
True, you don’t need love to decry cruelty and inequality. We can fight evildoers though we feel rage in our hearts. But acting from that place of rage doesn’t solve anything. It just leads to more war.
To avoid wars of all kinds, we must learn to act with loving courage and gentle determination. Unlike hate and anger that seek a scapegoat, that must blame and judge in order to feel okay, love accepts the other. It understands and even forgives. Yet it demands that wrongs be made right, that hurts be healed rather than avenged, that the bodies and the spirits of the people be fed, and that the aggression ends.
The Best Alternative
To do this is dangerous. Love can get us killed. But so can hate. So can agitating, seeking revenge, lying, threatening. Yet only love can change hearts. Only love heals, and it is healing that our world needs now.
Yes, our situation is dire. The pain around the world is horrible. Yet if, in our fear and anger, we try to turn things around in a day, we will destroy more than we ever protect. That which is built in anger becomes angry.
Love encourages and blesses rather than forcing change. Because of that, it is slow. But it works if we let it. And it beats every alternative I know.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- Roose, Kevin, MAGA Memes vs. ‘No Malarkey’ Mugs: Digital Danger for Biden, The New York Times, April 17, 2020, A21.
- Stewart, Columba, “Evagrius Ponticus and the ‘Eight Generic Logismoi,’” In the Garden of Evil: Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages, Newhauser, Richard, ed., Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2005, 2-34, 3.
- Norris, Kathleen, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life, New York: Riverhead Books, 2008, ebook 74.
Photo by Warlen G Vasco on Unsplash
Copyright © 2020 Barbara E. Stevens All Rights Reserved