When Love Is Not Enough

When love is not enough, love more.

'Love is the answer, and you know that for sure.' - John Lennon

Jesus says "Physician, heal thyself." Naturally, we all want to be physicians, -- individuals of such charisma, confidence, and grace that our very presence must provide a healing atmosphere for others-- but, we are all still patients, as well. When someone seems, or is, stubbornly resistant to our love, we must try to resist the temptation to subside into dispondency, or to respond by writing them off. We may have to confess that the sickness is as much ours as it is theirs.

If someone is unreceptive to our love, the problem could have a lot to do with our own inability to administer consistent doses of love, or to administer those doses in a way that the patient's psychic system can assimilate it. This is not something we need to feel inadequate about, but it ought to give us pause, when we are tempted to pass judgement on someone else. They say "It is a poor teacher who blames his pupil." Likewise, it must be a poor doctor who blames his patient, and a poor master who blames his disciple.

We are brought up in our society to think in terms of individual repsonsibility, but the largest problems we face are systemic; pessimistic as it may sound, we are only insects caught in a larger web. It is easier to blame the individual, the little man, and to discard him, than it is to understand and to work together for the reformation of an entire culture, -- and, yet, until reforms of this radical a nature are made, individuals will continue to suffer, and to bear the blame. Some types of people will never find their place, -- at least, not in a society which aggressively denies them one.

Perhaps the best we can offer them is a little sympathy, and if that doesn't raise their spirits, we must learn to release the rest to God. Not everyone will find peace in this life, but we can give them as much peace as possible, by not becoming just one more voice of judgment.