Christmas is the time of love, they say. For Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving), “love is primarily giving”. It is not about “giving up something, being deprived of, sacrificing”, it is the expression of one’s aliveness, of one’s potency.
Of course, there is little sense in giving if it is not met with receiving. As I receive from you, I give you the opportunity to give, and vice versa. The exchange that takes place in giving and receiving deepens the relationship.
The biggest gift we can give may not necessarily be material. We can give our time, understanding, attention, appreciation, acknowledgment, a smile, good will, forgiveness.
What is it that you want most?
- Love heals
- With gentle hands
- Love Shares
- With constant care
- Love stands
- With arms open
- Love walks
- With all to share Barry Brailsford (Wisdom of the Four Winds)
We, Mirjam and Rudolf, are coming to the end of another year of being in relationship with ourselves, our loved ones and the wider world. In sharing our insights and experiences we have affirmed our journey, become a little clearer of who we are and gathered strength and direction. We have also celebrated our uniqueness and made a commitment to sharing with others what is meaningful to us. We hope that our articles have been a source of reflection, inspiration and dialogue. Feedback comes to us in a roundabout way: we hear at the beach of the article that landed in Canada, the requests to republish our articles elsewhere were followed by clients arriving at our doorsteps who read the Beacon in another part of town. “Love is a chain”, I once heard, and so it is.
With every contribution that we make we feed the chain. So we like to encourage all of you to follow your excitement, to leave behind all that no longer honours the truth of your journey, to take time to listen within, to take time to share your apprec iation, to make peace with your pain, anger, envy, hate, greed and guilt, to take responsibility for your healing. The call for all of us in the next Millenium is to be responsible for all that we are and to bring light to the shadow within and the shadow to the light.
“The increasingly precarious state of our planet and its inhabitants is calling on us to wake up, reevaluating how we are living, and align ourselves with a larger, sacred vision of human life. While this kind of self-inquiry used to be the vocation of spiritual adepts, who often left the world behind in pursuit of truth, we can no longer afford the luxury of a spirituality that is divorced from “real life”. In these times when our world and our very humanity are increasingl;y at risk, we need a new kind of grounded spirituality that arises out of, and addresses itself to, the challenges of ordinary living. We need a grounded spirituality that can transform the quality of life on this planet through being thoroughly committed to the her-and-now. Fortunately, we have a powerful vehicle close at hand for developing this kind of vision – our intimate relations with those we love.” John Welwood
Mirjam Busch & Rudolf Jarosewitsch
Copyright © 12/1999 by Rumijabu | Originally published in Southshore Beacon #113, Dec1999
Waiora Healing Waters 