Eager to love

Hello, welcome. I've been reading this morning from Richard Rohr's book Essential Teachings on Love, and I really like this bit: The central practice in Franciscan mysticism, therefore, is that we must remain in love. 'Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace, and then we will find peace over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honour beauty everywhere.' So I really like that quote, the idea that in order to connect with what's good outside us, we need to somehow dwell in good in ourselves or see with those eyes. But it raises the question: how do we do that? How do we— how do we remain in love? How do we become eager to love? For me this morning, that begins with looking out of the window and watching the goldfinches eating sunflower hearts and just, and just lingering in that, watching. I think that what we need to do is start where we are, and where we are might be a dark place, but even if it's a very dark place, there are little tiny seeds beauty, little tiny seeds of goodness, little tiny seeds of love. And I think that we can begin to grow those seeds if we pay attention to them. Attention is a form of love, and we do have a reasonable amount of control over where we put our attention. We can turn our head and We can also notice the thoughts that come up in our mind and either choose to follow those thoughts or to let them go, to let them blow through the room. I love that image of leaves just blowing through an empty room, and I think that It doesn't really matter where we begin. It doesn't matter if we start with the small little seeds in ourself or the small little seeds in the world, that both of those places lead to each other and there's a conversation that happens, an ongoing conversation that grows and deepens. So I'm going to read this again. The central practice in Franciscan mysticism, therefore, is that we must remain in love. Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace, and then we will find peace over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honour beauty everywhere. So I hope that you can find a few of the seeds today. Let me know about them if you would like to, and thank you for listening. Satya Robyn.