No fear in Love
When I was a teenager, there was an elderly man in our church. I passed him in the foyer one Sunday morning and he said "Jimmie, do you remember what I told you?" I didn't recall ever having any conversations with him, so I said I didn't. He said "Don't be afraid of anything." Some months later I saw him again. He said "Do you remember what I told you?" I said "Yes." He repeated, "Don't be afraid of anything." That has proven to be a difficult challenge. But his advice has stuck with me. I can't say I've mastered my fears by any means, but I have at least come to understand the principle, if not the practice. Somewhere back in the '90s I was reading the book A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. In that book I was introduced to the idea that the opposite of love is fear. At first I thought, as you probably do now, that hate is the opposite of love. But it immediately occurred to me that you can