For many years now I have been completely in love with love. And when I say love I am not really talking about romantic love, I am talking about kindness and love for everyone. And recently I have been thinking a whole lot about love and some things I may have been wrong about.
Sometimes I feel like I focus too much on love. I am afraid of losing sight of other important things (like patience or gratitude or faith, etc.) if I am only focusing on love. I want to be virtuously well-rounded, I guess. :) So for a while now I have been trying to not only read talks about and study love, but also force myself to read talks on and study other subjects. I have been trying to not only find quotes about love, but also find quotes about other virtues. I have been trying to not be so one-sided. It makes logical sense that if you neglect an area, it will simply deteriorate. And I had obviously been neglecting a lot of areas. Basically everything but love. Which was preposterous! So I decided to change and let love go a bit.
And it was a big mistake. Quite silly, actually. When I was living in France, I just let myself be obsessed with love. I basically just gave all my passion and devotion to loving other people in every way. And it made me so happy. I don't think I wasn't virtuously well-rounded at all. On the contrary, some how I was growing spiritually in every way even though I was mostly focused on one thing.
So this is what I have realized: Love really is the center of everything and some how, almost as if by magic, if you devote all of your energy into love and why we love and how we love, I believe that all of the other virtues will naturally come to us as well.
Because love is everything. It can be found in every virtue. It is the why and the how of every other good thing we want to develop.
Now, maybe everyone doesn't feel called to love love the way I do. I think everyone has to find their own path. I believe that God has specific things he needs us to focus on and it could vary from person to person. But I believe that if we focus on whatever God needs us to, we will never be unbalanced or not well-rounded. I believe that every other virtue will come to us.
Now sometimes it is hard for to give myself permission to obsess about love because I just love love! And if I enjoy something this much it must not be my path. God's will is supposed to be the hardest thing, always against whatever I really want to be doing. Right? Um... this is crazy talk. (Sometimes I will sit down to read a talk and come across a talk about love and I get so excited. But then I will think "No, this is not love time. This is hope time." Seriously. It's gotta stop. Because it's cray cray.) If you are a good person and striving and trying to do God's will and be a good person, I think that more often than not your desires will be aligned with whatever God wants from you. I absolutely believe that God places certain desires in us for a reason. Trust that. Do what you love. Go after it unashamedly.
Finally, to end all of this, I want to share part of a message from the leaders of my church. It goes like this:
"As Church members, we sometimes have a tendency to attach ourselves to gospel programs, issues, and even doctrines that seem interesting, important, or enjoyable to us. We are tempted to draw targets around them, making us believe we are aiming at the center of the gospel... How easy it would be to select our favorite gospel topic, draw a bull’s-eye around it, and then make a case that we have identified the center of the gospel.
This is not a problem unique to our day. Anciently, religious leaders spent a great deal of time cataloging, ranking, and debating which of the hundreds of commandments was the most important.
One day a group of religious scholars attempted to draw the Savior into the controversy. They asked Him to weigh in on an issue upon which few could agree. “Master,” they asked Him, “which is the great commandment in the law?” We all know how Jesus answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Please note the last sentence: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”The Savior not only showed us the target, but He also identified the bull’s-eye...
The more we learn about God and feel His love for us, the more we realize that the infinite sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a divine gift of God. And God’s love inspires us to use the path of true repentance, which will lead to the miracle of forgiveness. This process enables us to have greater love and compassion for those around us. We will learn to see beyond labels. We will resist the temptation to accuse or judge others by their sins, shortcomings, flaws, political leanings, religious convictions, nationalities, or skin color.
We will see every one we meet as a child of our Heavenly Father—our brother or our sister.
We will reach out to others in understanding and love—even those who may not be particularly easy to love. We will mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort.
And we will realize that there is no need for us to agonize about the correct gospel target.
The two great commandments are the target. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. As we accept this, all other good things will fall into place.
If our primary focus, thoughts, and efforts are centered on increasing our love for Almighty God and extending our hearts to others, we can know that we have found the right target and are aiming at the bull’s-eye—becoming true disciples of Jesus Christ." (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Ensign January 2017, The Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
It's all love. And I give myself permission to be endlessly passionate about love. Loving God and loving everyone. It is the center of everything and I know that everything else will fall into place, just as God intends.
I love you all so much I could burst. Thank you for loving me enough to devote some of your time to reading the musings of an aspiring writer.
xoxo, Autumn
(p.s. This is Matt. And he knows a lot about love. He is so good at it. That's why I chose this picture.)
