An Excerpt from The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife by Marianne Williamson
Love is to fear what light is to darkness; in the presence of one, the other disappears. When enough of us stand in the light of true love — not a simplistic love, but the strong and extraordinary love of God — then all war will cease. But not until then. Until enough of us learn to love as God loves, creating a force field of holiness to purify the earth and dissolve its evil, then we’re going to continue our march toward planetary disaster. Love is the answer. Yet look at how terrifying that thought is to the ego. We find that notion — that love is our salvation — more frightening than war, do we not? We resist it more than we resist nuclear disaster. And why? Because the love of which I speak is one that would transcend the ego, and the world we live in is the ego’s delight. The ego knows that by embracing love, we’re destroying it. But those are our only choices, really: the ego will survive, or we will.
Not everyone has money or worldly power, but all of us have equal capacity to think, intend, and pray with conviction. Love is an ever-renewable spiritual resource. We wouldn’t have to worry so much about the state of the world if we felt more universal agreement among us that we’ll all do whatever we can to heal it.
No matter who we are, we have things we’re supposed to do to fulfill the calling of our souls. But the soul’s calling isn’t a broad revelation that will be written in large letters across the sky. Rather, it’s a challenge to be the person we’re capable of being in any given moment. We never know what conversation or encounter could lead to what, as long as we’re showing up for it as best we can. God’s universe is itself one big loving intention, and when you align your own intentions with His, you set in motion a kind of wind at your back.
Hatred and fear don’t have this cosmic support; while they have power, they don’t have spiritual power. And they’re spiritually powerless when confronted by a genuine love. There are terrible things in the news today, but as much darkness as there is out there, there is more love in here. Perhaps that’s what the bigger problems of the world are here for, in some way: They challenge us to dig deeper into ourselves for who we really are and how we might choose to live differently. Martin Luther King Jr. said that it’s time to inject a new kind of love into the veins of human civilization. That love is rising up today. It’s a new kind of thinking, a great turning of the heart.
In every area — from medicine to education to business to media to politics to the arts — there are people expressing new, more enlightened modes of being and behavior. And each of us, no matter who we are, can align ourselves with a better idea. Whether it’s something as simple as using a different kind of lightbulb in response to global warming or working to rebuild a neighborhood school, joining in a group meditation or forgiving those who have trespassed against us, we can participate in a new wave of creation. When we consciously dedicate ourselves to creating a more loving planet, then that which is not love will fall of its own dead weight.
And when all of this comes together, the world will change in the twinkling of an eye.
Dear God,
I place the world in Your hands.
Please use me
to make things right.
Amen
Love to you all,
Jeane
AMEN.
🙂