Love Casts Out Fear

Easter Thursday 2020

I have been thinking and writing in an upbeat and positive manner and frame of mind because I believe and have experienced calm and peace even in the most turgid, upsetting and challenging situations.

I am deeply fortunate for which I am truly grateful. #thanks #fortunate #grateful

Although I am financially poor relying on a British State pension alone, I have , through friends, a roof over my head, a warm comfortable house to live in and food in my belly. I have a minor physical problem but my health and fitness, especially for my age, are good.

I am in lock down. #lockdown

I realise that many are suffering deep anxieties over finances, rent, food for their families, isolation from siblings, children, parents, friends, concern over sickness of themselves and loved ones and over deaths. #anxieties #finance #mortgage #jobs

It is a huge strain for many.

Personally, I am relishing much of the silence and distancing, even though a few opportunities and necessities have been missed.

Others do not relish it at all.

A friend sent me these lines from Seamus Heaney's, The Cure at Troy:

Believe that a further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

Yes, and I believe in that glorious vision of Isaiah when - the lion will lie down with the lamb and there will be no more hurt on all my holy mountain. Maybe not literally but metaphorically, symbolically, mythically and on a further shore. #seamusheaney

Yet I realise and acknowledge that many beyond just the anxiety of the pandemic are in terrifying times and situations.

I am reading Christy Lafteri's, The Beekeeper of Aleppo.

As I read I think on the fearful lives and journeys of migrants, on those suffering hellish lives in places of war (Syria, Yemen and countless others), those suffering hunger, disease and abuse beyond imagining. I think of those being persecuted (Yazidis, Uighurs, Zoroastrians, hosts of other minority religious groups), the prisoners of conscience and those enslaved as sex workers and in other ways. #beekeeperofaleppo #christylaafteri #seamusheaney #migrants #love #hope

I think of those suffering addictions and debts, racial and domestic abuse: I think on the evil intents of the perpetrators.

For many the pandemic is unseen, unexpected, unknown, disruptive, pernicious and uncontrollable and this is the cause of the fear and from it flows other hardships and terrors.

Yet across all suffering peoples I also see and hear of the incredible, dogged determination to live, to seek a better place and time.

I see examples of the indomitable human spirit and the love of family, friends, mankind and life and creation itself. I see generosity and self-sacrifice even to death.

When I was 18 years old, I took a gap year tour of Europe.

I remember well arriving at Pompeii and seeing in a Museum the preserved bodies of a Mother and Child (so the notice read). The mother was curled around the child in a deeply protective and loving hold. The Curator told me that it was probably the mother protecting her child as the volcano erupted and the lava swamped the city.

I believe in love, a love that tries to take on suffering and share the burden of others.

A love that never belittles the courage, faith and hope of human being.

A love that casts out fear.

Yet I do not minimise the hell many endure and I hope for a new world.