It seems ironic that Valentine’s Day, which became popular in the United States in the 1800s, falls now in the middle of Black History Month–not by design, I’m sure. Equally ironic is the unconditional love of African Americans throughout the centuries, for their own family members and children and even for those of the slave masters. Through such love, in the depths of moral and social decadence and deprivation, came a spiritual balance to otherwise unbearable circumstances.
However, as African Americans become freer to control such circumstances as well as our own destinies undaunted love has taken on new dimensions based on love of what?
Most of us today have been brought up to believe that love is something to be found, initially in one’s parents and later perhaps in some special person who is destined to become our soul mate. Many assume that once we have found that special person, that love will last throughout our lives.
Once that reality check bounces, we realize that all things in nature change–people (and our minds) are no exception. Today’s fragile love, based on such transitory things as youth, beauty, and materialism, will change with the inevitable change of each, if not long before.
Also love, whether for our own sake or for the sake of others, is subject to constant emotional changes based on our determination of what one deserves or is worthy of. Love for God’s sake, however, leaves the judgment, reward, and punishment up to Him. The sensitive emotions then do not enter the equation.
“To be hurt and forgive is divine. But to understand and not be hurt is greater,” state the Baha’i Holy Writings. Such an understanding can derive only through “developing our loving and knowing capacities that we might dedicate that love and knowledge to the service of mankind, the highest station to which one can attain. It is unlikely that we will ever be able to attain world unity without developing our knowing and loving capacities to the fullest extent, state the Baha’i Writings.
During this Black History Month may we consider that out of the bowels of slavery was born a new race, African Americans, whose roots, imbedded in nearly every national soil, strip it of all perceived national, religious, territorial, and ethnic purity over which wars have been waged throughout the annals of time–and still continue. It would seem more befitting for such an original race, rather than search tirelessly for some ethnic lineage of which to be proud, (which divides us), to instead seek more awareness of the spiritual roots which unite a race that owes its allegiance only to God. The survival and steady advancement of such a race is evidence of its “Faith–the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1); and “Love, the greatest of all living powers,” as referred to in the Baha’i Writings.
“Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights the flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence, there is indeed no greater power than the magnet of love”
“ Ah me,” asks Abdu’l-Baha. “Hast thou love? Then thy power is irresistible.”
