The Global Conversation

Tag: union

  • “I love you, you’re perfect, now change”

    “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” is the title of a highly successful and now retired Off-Broadway musical in New York City which emphasized in a light-hearted fashion what has sadly come to be the not-so-light-hearted and oftentimes painful experience found in so many relationships:  partnerships foundationed in neediness and expectation, two of the “three love-enders,” as described to us in the book Friendship with God, with the third “love-ender” being jealousy.

    Conversations with God offers to us the following insight:

    “When you lose sight of each other as sacred souls on a sacred journey, then you cannot see the purpose, the reason, behind all relationships.”

    If we are entering into our relationships with the idea that our partners must BE a particular way or DO a particular thing in order for us to experience the depths of our own happiness and abundance, the expansiveness of our own joy and light, and the fullness of our own completeness and sufficiency, we are functioning within an understanding of “love with conditions” and misguided ideas of what perfection truly is.

    In an era where the divorce rate exceeds 50%, what is really going on here?  What are we not understanding and, thus, not being allowed to experience?

    Are our limited understandings and parameters in relation to this institution called “marriage” too narrow to hold a space for a deeply fulfilling soul partnership to thrive?   Have we placed unrealistic human boundaries on the aspect of ourselves that is without limits?

    Most of us, at one time or another and at one level or another, have experienced the joyful bliss of a budding relationship and the devastating heartbreak of its demise.  So many of us are yearning and searching for the perfect partner, what is often termed a “soul-mate,” only to experience repeated outcomes of disillusionment and disappointment; yet there are those who have discovered and held onto that seemingly elusive but deeply satisfying recipe of love and commitment.

    Why does this experience of a spiritually rich and loving relationship evade so many in what seems to resemble a cruel game of hide-and-seek?  It has been my own personal experience that a gentle shift in perspective can elevate a relationship from an experience of division and angst to an experience of unity and bliss.  This type of shift will invite me to take a conscious step away from my expectations and attachment to outcomes; to separate myself from my mind’s craving to be “right,” which oftentimes requires making someone else “wrong”; and to be fully present in the completeness of not only myself, but in the completeness of my beloved other.

    Perhaps someone, someday, somewhere will create and produce a musical about relationships that carries with it a message from within the perspective of The New Spirituality, and perhaps a title of…

    “I Love You, Without Condition, Eternally.” 

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support .   To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • France proposes banning words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ as part of gay marriage legalization

    Thank you, France, for demonstrating that, YES, our world IS evolving and moving towards a more loving and accepting society, breaking through the intolerant barriers of an Old Cultural Story which dictates in what form love is to be experienced and expressed and moving into a New Cultural Story where couples of all genders are free to experience and enjoy the rights and privileges afforded to ALL loving relationships.

    According to a recent article in The Telegraph, “France is set to ban the words “mother” and “father” from all official documents under new plans to legalize gay marriage,” giving equal adoption rights to homosexual and heterosexual couples.

    Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told France’s Catholic newspaper, La Croix, “Who is to say that a heterosexual couple will bring up a child better than a homosexual couple, that they will guarantee the best conditions for the child’s development?”

    As expected, this proposed law is being met with vehement resistance by members of the Catholic Church.  “Gay marriage would herald a complete breakdown in society,” Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the head of the French Catholic Church, told Christian’s RFC radio last week.  He is further quoted as saying, “This could have innumerable consequences. Afterward they will want to create couples with three or four members. And after that, perhaps one day the taboo of incest will fall.”

    Wow, is the suggestion really being made that the legalized union of two loving same-sex mutually consenting adults is one step shy of a parent engaging in sexual relations with their own child or brother or aunt?    And perhaps I’m confused, but isn’t it heterosexuals who have been historically, and still are even to this day, entering into multiple-partner relationships?  What does THAT type of irrational conjecture have to do with a same-sex partnership being afforded the opportunity to be a legally and socially recognized union?

    And just WHEN and HOW did God’s glorious gift of sex become a tool to be used to judge, control, manipulate, bring shame upon, and condemn?  Do we honestly imagine a God who created the possibility of deeply felt love to exist between two souls – whether that is a man and a man, a woman and a man, or a woman and a woman – only to then be judged and punished for simply being who they are?  What is it that we are actually afraid of here? 

    I applaud this bold step forward the country of France is proposing, a step that embraces the forward movement of The New Spirituality and celebrates everyone’s ability to enter freely and fully into a legally recognized union that supports at an equal level the depth of their love and the holy union of their souls.