“A heart that loves someone cannot hate anyone." - Johann Goethe
If you really love someone, you can have no room for hate.
Genuine love for one means genuine love for all. Love is so overflowing, so
gratuitous, so free and un-demanded, that the very notion of the exhaustion and
demands of hate are completely foreign and alien.
Of course we are limited in our capacity to show that love
to all. We need to make choices of where our energy of love goes; choosing to express
love to one or to a few means that our expression of love to another or to
others cannot be carried out. And we will find limits to our expression even
with those who we do choose to express out love to.
But just because love cannot be shown to all does not mean that love cannot be available to all. And a heart that loves someone cannot hate
anyone.
Jesus was limited. He healed many, but not all. He
wept with some, but not all. He saved one woman from being stoned, but not all.
He shared the last supper with 12 friends, not with everyone.
And yet why should that limitation prevent his love from
being universal and cosmic? Jesus loved someone.
Jesus loved specific people. And
through that specificity, he has loved all, for a heart that loves someone
cannot hate anyone.
And so whenever we love,
whenever we give and receive from other in genuine vulnerability, we too have
tapped into or opened ourselves to what is universal, to the infinite love at
the heart of all things. Hate closes down and is small, narrow, and confining.
Love, even within human limitations, is infinite. In fact, love only exists
within limitations at all! And within those very limitations, it is infinite
and closes down all possibility of hate, smallness, and confinement.
A heart that loves someone cannot hate anyone.
