Attuning to Love

Riffs on Wisdom Teachings (8 of 10)

Brenda Brayko

Jul 21, 2023

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-13:54

Love as Action

This week my husband and I celebrated 30 years of marriage. Crazy! From before the “I wills” spoken in a church and witnessed by friends and family, we loved one another deeply. Now, after thirty years of life’s unfolding together, our love is more like an ocean than a waterfall, more deep and teeming with life than gushing. At any rate, this event perfectly coincides with the Biblical wisdom teachings always worth attention: a teaching on love.

Thirty years of wedded bliss - in LOVE. Brenda and Brent, 2023.

I would venture that most are familiar with these particular teachings as they are often used in wedding ceremonies (ours included). The first for our purposes is from the book of Matthew:

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:36 - 40)

We don’t often use language including “commandment” anymore. But one does get the idea that this is an instruction for how to navigate the world. This passage suggests that love is an action - a verb - that is directed toward God, one’s self and one another.

But does that mean being loving is a duty?

I would say no. Love is Not a duty. It is not even a state of mind. Love is much bigger that that; it is a state of mind and a state of being. It’s a vibration! (But I’ll expand on that in a moment.)

On one level it boils down to consciously choosing to love or be as love or to take loving action. It sounds simple enough until you realize that this also includes loving God, one another or oneself when you least feel like it. Of course it’s easy to be loving when loving is easy. With Christ Jesus showing us the way, we witness how to take loving action when it involves difficult people, difficult circumstances, or even persecution.

Impossible?

If acting in love is only coming from our thinking, conscious minds, it might appear to be impossible! Imagine that person you know who can be difficult or challenging. Responding to them in a loving manner might be possible, but just as likely you might swell with your own negative, unloving responses. Just because you want to be loving doesn’t mean you will be.

Here I am comforted by a few truths.

The Biblical teaching that we are made in the image and likeness of God reminds us of our inherently divine nature. As aspects of God we have capacities beyond imagination. Simplifying now - God is Love. We are of God. Therefore, we are Love.

While I believe it is true that we are an aspect of God and therefore entirely capable of being love or acting from love, for millennia humans have also perceived ourselves as separate from God and have thus created our own limitations. By realigning to God’s love, the picture changes. This is where a few insights into the next passage become relevant.

In the following familiar passage from 1 Corinthians '[pronounced “first Corinthians”] notice how even heroic or admirable actions void of love as their foundation are empty of benefit to others.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (13: 1 - 3 New English Translation)

Here, the speaker Paul suggests that if love is the foundation then all the other gifts become rich and beneficial to others, while the opposite is also true. My personal takeaway: When I use my gifts - as ordinary or extraordinary as they may be - they are only truly beneficial if I begin from a loving place or resonance. In other words, I can align to God’s love. And because I believe this, it is why I send my son to his work place with the admonition, “Go make a difference by making those sandwiches with love!”

The passage continues with these familiar words which frame love slightly differently:

Love is patient and kind; it is does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (v. 4-6) And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (v. 13 New English Translation)

Here, Paul seems to provide a definition of love rooted in actions and attitudes with which one engages by stating what love is and is not. One could conclude that love has certain qualities to work for, such as patience, kindness, humility, and selflessness. But, stick with me now, what if it’s not so much about an instruction manual as it is a gauge, not a definition but a list of identifying attributes to recognize when love is present.

Singing Love. Being Love.

For a long time now, I have studied frequency and vibration. One of the more astounding findings in science has to do with emotions and their vibrational frequencies. For example, there are separate vibrational frequencies to anger and worry and hatred; these are all “low vibrations”. Likewise, joy and compassion and love are all high vibrational frequencies. We inherently know this because we feel it in our bones and in our beings. For example, sitting next to someone who is gently comforting you feels very different from sitting next to someone who is shaming you.

It also means that when you are resonating in a high frequency you simply can’t also be resonating at a low frequency; you can’t simultaneously love and hate. When one is aligned with God’s love, one is in the vibration of love. It’s as if you are a song and singing, and that song is love itself. You sing it without TRYING. You become the action of love. You are a verb.

Sacred sounds resound in sacred spaces. Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 2016.

Here’s the kicker, God is always singing in that vibration of love. Always has and always will. That is why love “always” protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. It cannot do otherwise.

Returning to the passage then, it stands to reason that Paul is providing the evidence one would witness in oneself or others when is aligned with love or love is the vibration or song being sung. These qualities paraphrased are:

genuine patience
kindness
humility
selflessness
willingness
forgiveness
and alignment with eternal Truth.

These days I find myself occasionally pausing to wonder: where am I coming from with that comment or action? Is it from love (or selfishness or greed or, or, or). If I’m “off”, I return to practices that bring me back to a heart-centered, loving self, including walks in nature, reading wisdom teachings, and various forms of meditation and prayer. In other words, I retune the song I’m singing to God’s eternal tuning fork - LOVE.

Individually, this is potent. But collectively, this is truly powerful. I’ve experienced this union with God or Christ a few times. When I was a teenager I attended a Luther League convention with 16,000 attendees. When we all joined in singing praise songs, my whole body became joy. More recently, I was on a spiritual retreat with 140 others. Love was literally in the air! Such a powerful, collective love could indeed bring enemies to lay down their weapons.

These Biblical wisdom teachings on love ultimately do more than simply define love, they indicate what it is to be love, or to be in the vibration of love to your benefit and to the world’s benefit. Such a truth is not out of reach nor outrageous, it is who and what we truly are as children of God. According to Guinness Book of World Records, the Bible has sold more copies than any book ever - something like 1815 billion copies. To me, the Bible’s core teaching is to love God, one another, and oneself. It’s a simple message that once truly embodied by humanity will change the world “for good”.

Post Script

If you like going down rabbit holes and haven’t yet investigated this one, check out the science of sacred sounds including the “love frequency” which is 528 hertz. Start with cymatics and go from there. Here are a few interesting videos to get you started.