Connection

I'm just back from the 'Connection' Festival. It was a day of getting together with people of different Christian denominations in the Geneva/Nyon area, and celebrating what we have in common as well as the diverse ways we have of expressing our common beliefs.

It was nice to spend some time getting in touch with my Spiritual side...This was one of the areas of my life that I have been neglecting for sometime... I have been trying to work on developing my Physical and especially my Intellectual side trying to learn as much as I can from the people I meet and the new experiences I come across, but have not really thought much about the Spirit...

Most of the day was discussing about Hope, Faith and Love, and just thought of writing down some thoughts that came to my head...

One of the first things that I thought of, was a verse from the book that I just finished reading; 'The fifth mountain' by Paulo Coelho

"Souls too like plants need a different kind of rain: faith, hope, a reason to live. When this did not pass, everything in the soul died even if the body went on living, and the people could say, ‘here in this body there was once a man’."

When I read this I thought how true... What is life without Faith, Hope and of course Love? In my life I have see these people who's souls have died, even though they are physically alive, some due to poverty, distress and suffering who have lost all hope and others ironically who have too much money and have become so greedy that there's nothing else in their lives and they are always unsatisfied...This is one of the things that worries me about being successful, about earning too much, about being too comfortable and maybe starting to think that the purpose of life is just about material things and about pleasure...Especially when staying in a country like Switzerland, which sometimes feels like a fairy land to me with all the beauty, cleanliness and everything working on time...I want to make sure that I do not forget that there is suffering and pain in life...and that the purpose of life is not about having the best material things or having the most fun (not that it is all bad, as long as it is in moderation), but what's much more important are the relationships that you make and how your life impacts others...

Well I went off on a tangent but thought I'll close this post by going back to the original topic and giving two definitions of Love.

One of the speakers summed it up beautifully as "To see or seek that which is true, beautiful and noble in the life of another"

And one of my favourite passages from the Bible, which is the one written by St Paul on Love,

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. "