A Prayer To My Fellow Human Beings

I am your keeper, and I hope you are mine.

I pray for you, and I hope you pray for me.

I seek to better understand you, 
and I hope you desire to better understand me.

I love you, and I hope you love me.

I am your keeper, and I hope you are mine.

Love - And Unlovely People

Love - And Unlovely People

"To grow in love, God will bring unlovely people into your life so you can practice real love".

These words of wisdom from someone I respect dearly struck a chord with me yesterday. Isn't it so true? How are we able to gain perspective in life without having endured relationships with unlovely people (bad people)? And how are we able to mature and be beautiful people without having been victorious in dealing with the unlovely people that inevitably enter our lives?

The answer is that human beings need to endure a broad scope of good and bad experiences in life in order to grow and become an improved person - and this process often includes very painful experiences in dealing with bad people.

Without dark, we have no light; and without bad, we have no good. Good and bad - or good and evil - are necessary elements of life. To have experienced, tasted, felt, and ultimately been victorious over bad is necessary for personal growth, maturity, and becoming a beautiful person.

With the experiences and personal victories derived from overcoming bad people, or even shameful and hateful people, new paradigms are forged and new prisms of light are created so we are able to view life from a more authentic, loving, and beautiful perspective.

We must be beacons of love and goodness for the world. If we don't answer this calling I believe we are not living our purpose and we are not fulfilling our obligation to others.

Evil does exist - but I believe it doesn't have to be present in our lives. There is a solution. As legend has it, during a classroom encounter between young Albert Einstein and a professor who was arguing that the Christian faith is a myth, Einstein argues that evil is the absence of God in the same way that darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat.

I agree with this story (whether legend or not). I believe our individual lights of love can and do improve the world when we play our assigned role. We have this responsibility to ourselves, and to others.

Each individual possesses immense power and significant potential. In fact, the only thing that has ever changed the world is the individual.

Sadly, most people don't realize their potential therefore they miss the opportunity to play one of their very important and unique roles in this world: The role to overcome bad by being good.

To all the beautiful and lovely people in life: The world needs you. Are you in?

I am.

-Jeff Bomareto
January 11, 2011