Big Love
By Jo Wollen
(Excerpt from original article)
“The Miracle of Birth” from Kingdom of the Gods [Plate 29) by Geoffrey Hodson
A friend and I were having a general conversation about theosophical concepts. To my surprise and consternation, my friend, when asked her opinion on most every one, responded, “I just don’t know.”
“You know about love, though,” I remember urging her, thinking we could start from a simple place and proceed from there.
“I think love is relationship, but I really don’t know,” she said. The conversation was very much on my mind that evening when I took out my writing portfolio to finish an article I had decided to write on the general appeal to me of Theosophy.
I had come up with six items, which I titled “The Core Teachings of Theosophy.” I was satisfied with them and wondered how to elaborate. But I was still so perplexed by my friend’s response of “I don’t know what love is” that those words plastered themselves over my original intention, and I found myself thinking. Well, if love is relationship, and one does not see love in the creation of the universe(s), what to do? Love permeates every aspect of creation, doesn’t it? Surely one cannot argue with that.
With that as background, then, here are the six core teachings of Theosophy that captured my recognition and dedication when I first encountered them at age fifteen.
- The vastness of creation
- The inexorableness of evolution, thus change and growth as inevitable
- The orderliness and laws governing all aspects of life
- The justice and fairness of life, as revealed by karma
- The kindness of a system that includes reincarnation, thus giving one second chances
- The oneness of all life
Can all that be subsumed under the word LOVE? Is that not what love is: vast, orderly, inexorable, just, kind, inclusive? Not that I set out here to define love. But I find its definition in the attributes I find at the core of Theosophy. None of these attributes is emotional, though traditionally we think of “love” as an emotion. But this is Big Love, Real Love I am talking about. The love of God for humanity. For Life. For the Universe(s)…
As I pondered these six Truths I deeply felt the presence of a Love which could be large enough to manifest such a Creation. But shrink the idea of Love down to its more ordinary, human reality, the love two people have for each other. Wouldn’t we want it to be vast? Vast enough to grow in new ways? And wouldn’t we want it to include change, so it would mirror our growth and accommodate suffering, old age, and the vicissitudes of change? Confidence would come, knowing our human love would follow laws. Peace would ensue from knowing karma and reincarnation ensure fairness and justice. And finally, how could there not be the fulfillment of an overriding belief in our oneness with all?
