Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm here on Dartmoor on a slightly elevated view sitting on one of my favourite grey granite rocks.
For me this rock reminds me of the rock solid nature of what it is to come from a place of love and that's going to be what I'm talking about today.
And I'm looking at the hillside on my left which runs up to the sky and is covered with brown bracken and down below me I can see a little copse of woods that is the trees are turning from green to a yellowy colour and soon they're going to go orange and be falling.
And then beyond that,
Because I'm slightly elevated,
The landscape below is a rural landscape of green and brown fields,
Like a patchwork quilt separated by hedgerows and lines of trees.
And today's reflection is all about love,
Holding the line for love,
Being present to love.
We met,
My husband and I met some friends for breakfast.
And before we met the friends,
We know that they have some quite strong political views and quite strong opinions.
And we don't share those political views,
But we love them dearly as people.
They're dear,
Dear people.
And we knew that we were going to have breakfast with them.
So we,
In the car,
As we were driving to the venue,
My husband and I had a conversation and the conversation was all about out.
Coming from a place of love,
We talked about the importance for each of us in recognizing our true nature,
That nature,
True nature of love,
Of standing in love,
On the solid ground of love,
And being present to other humans.
And we talked about the importance of,
Is this conversation,
Or is what I'm gonna say,
Take me closer to love or further away from love?
And so when we met our friends for breakfast,
Were really rooted deeply in coming from love.
And for me,
That feeling of coming from love gives me such solid ground.
And sure enough,
The conversation at some point shifted to the politics where we've got different views.
And my husband and I,
We just held the line for love.
We just kept talking about the importance of love and compassion and coming from love as we explore things in life.
At one point,
Our friend said,
Yes,
But surely that means that you maybe just lie down or you don't respond if something awful is going to happen to you or your family.
We were like,
No,
That's.
.
.
That's not what we're saying.
We're not saying what action should be taken in any given circumstance.
We're saying that the only place it can come from is love,
Like the only unifying feature of being human is to trace that thread back to the reservoir,
The lake,
The pool,
The ocean that is love,
That we are all connected to and come from.
That's the starting point.
For me,
If I don't go back to the starting point,
I am on unstable ground and I feel as though I need to form an opinion or to say that somebody is right or wrong or this is good or bad.
But that's not the starting point.
For me,
The starting point is coming back to love.
I know that when I get lost in my thoughts and opinions and feelings and I argue,
And I feel on unstable ground.
I feel deeply unsettled.
And I know from that place I hit out or I defend myself or I retreat or I interpret what people are saying in a way that I think maybe they're being threatening or I'm a victim.
I know that that's not the ground I want to stand on when I connect with fellow human beings.
For me,
It's about standing in love,
Holding the line for love,
Allowing love to come through me,
And connecting with love in the other.
And I hope that if I come across a circumstance where I really am up against it,
That I remember that that is the place to make a stand from,
To hold the line for,
And that my actions come from that place.
So today's reflection is that,
Is in a world that we can often see the differences of opinion and find ourselves getting lost in who is right and who is wrong.
Actually there's something to be said.
It's not just something to be said,
It's like the only thing to say is that we start from love.
And from love and from that place of connection,
That which connects all of us,
We find a way to navigate through the world.
And there will be compromise and there will be things where we feel that someone is right and someone is wrong but if we hold the line from love if we do things and say things that take us closer to love rather than further away from love,
Then that for me feels like the only way we can find our way to a world that is united with peace and love and compassion.
Let me know your reflections on holding the line for love,
Being a stand for love,
A beacon for love in the world.
And don't forget,
Of course,
To join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
