All You Need Is Love?

The “HOWS”.

The Hows are hard!

How will I be a pathfinder? 

And how will I be a mapmaker? 

This is another word that I have fallen in love with; mapmaker…

And speaking of love, is love one of my hows?  Is it really all I need?

I have heard one verse from the Bible calling to me this month.

“These things will last forever—faith, hope and love—and the greatest of these is love.”   1  Corinthians 13: 13.

Faith looks into the past and trusts all that is there, all that has been a part of your path so far, and that it is every piece of your journey that has created the you that you are today, perfectly positioned to step into your dreams.

My father was a cartographer.  He was the generation that went to new places, surveyed what was there, and came back to draw the maps for what he had seen.  All in person and by hand.  I desperately wanted to follow in his footsteps.  I don’t remember learning how to read maps, it is something that I have always been able to do and something that I have always collected.  My father in his wisdom, though, suggested that my generation would not be creating maps as he had done.  And he was right.  So my path took me into another world that I love, that of           education, and I have found that it is not so very different.  My generation does create maps differently, and especially in the education world.  My legacy from my father is priceless, and I have a sure and certain faith now that this is my destined path today.

Love, I think, exists in the here and now. 

I have reflected on how important it is to love and also to get love right.  To begin with, it is    finding that fine balance between loving myself and loving those who are around me.  If I love myself too much, I become selfish; if I love others too much, I lose myself.  Then there is setting the intention to love the Earth and be her caretaker, just as our first Great Commission called us to do in Genesis.  And then there is setting the intention to love my life and to find those          opportunities and possibilities, embracing the doubts that otherwise might whisper danger.

And hope looks into the future.  It doesn’t just see opportunities and possibilities, it trusts them, it steps out into them, it sees mistakes and wrong turns as part of the journey, it knows that nothing will stop me and everything is a chance to learn. 

I do believe there’s an “After”.  The Bible speaks of a new Earth, using the Greek word for re-genesis.  All will be made new and beautiful and perfect, just as it was originally.  Not sitting on a fluffy cloud with a harp, a perfect, healthy and even more beautiful Earth, with all exactly as it should be, including us.  It will be the best place to live, work and be.

Perhaps all we need is faith, hope and love.

Perhaps faith hope and love is all we need.

Because now the hows are flowing… 

“Instructions for living a life.  Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it.”  Mary Oliver

(Ubud; June 2024)