Two years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, Govinda (my husband) and I spent three weeks looking after an elderly couple, Tom & Linda Carpenter, who were both Course in Miracles teachers.
Despite the fact that Linda was experiencing dementia, every time we discussed the Course, she tuned right in, and offered valuable insight!
One of her constant reminders was that, “love is the answer regardless of the question.”
Lately I’ve been hearing those words.
What exactly did she mean?
In the Course, we’re taught that we are either experiencing love or fear.
Yet you may protest - you feel many other things besides fear!
Fear takes on LOTS of different faces.
It can present as anxiety, dread, hatred, jealousy, rejection… yet surprisingly, all of these varied emotions derive from fear.
Linda's words are a reminder that no matter what we are experiencing, the answer is to always return to love.
· Return to the peace, sanctity, and presence that is always available.
· Return to the truth of who you are.
· Return to the abiding love, light, and joy that surround you.
This love is who you are and is always available even when you don’t feel close to it at all!
I’m kinda of a PBS nerd, and particularly love Masterpiece Theatre.
The other night I was watching Call the Midwife (which has 10 seasons!) It’s about midwifery performed by nurses and nuns. In the episode, one of the older nuns was having a crisis of faith, depressed that she had lost her connection to God (I’ll call it love.)
After confessing this, she ended up having to help a young midwife student birth a child. That experience reawakened her to the love that is ever present.
I share this as an example of how we can get stuck in a space of fear, of feeling alone, or isolated, but if we are able to extend ourselves in service, that act crashes through the wall and reconnects us to love.
As my friend Linda often repeated, love is the answer regardless of the question.
If you’d like to deepen into this practice/idea, I’ve recorded a meditation on this theme.
Access it here. it’s called, What About Love?
Some days are hard and scary for all of us. Trauma gets activated, we feel stressed, small, and incapable, because we are human.
The invitation is simply to return.
To remember that abiding love is the refuge we can crawl back to no matter what.