Love as a Legacy: a Benediction

“Love as a Legacy: a Benediction”

By April McQueen

This side of heaven: let us show compassion—for it is in walking in others’ shoes that we release ourselves from the other-differentiation from which hatred comes to other-understanding from which love grows.  The risk of judgment associated with love makes us vulnerable before the beloved.

May our souls be magnified, not by human standards but spiritual ones.

This side of heaven: let us show kindness—reaching beyond what we would do for a casual colleague or a mere social associate to a pushed point that is what we would do for ourselves on our best day.  This is the sacrifice believers are called to do for others.  In so doing, may we serve as a terrestrial guide to celebrate moments of the divine on earth and preserve and cherish the dignity we share when we generously give love to one another. 

May our souls be magnified, not by human standards but spiritual ones.

This side of heaven: let the wisdom of experience, the beauty of charity, and the joy of peace be what sustains us through the tough times.  May our spirits be full of positivity, forcing out and away all negativity until the pain of bad memories, deep sadness, and hurtful loss become like old scars: minimized reminders. 

May our souls be magnified, not by human standards but spiritual ones. 

Our legacy, then, is our collective love experience: the how and the whom.  The greatest degree of love will return to us the more abundantly we share that love with the world.  Likewise, as vocation, expression, and sacred practice, we are called to use and develop our spiritual gifts with the body of Christ and those who exist beyond it.  Love is the greatest of all gifts, unique mathematically in the multiplication of it when we give that gift away.