Love

Alice Walker, American writer:
This is what I want for our country, more than anything. I want a leader who can love us. This is not what we usually say, or think of, when we are trying to choose a leader. People like to talk about "experience" and war and the economy, and making Americans look good again. I care about all these things. But when the lights are out and I'm left with just the stars in a super-dark sky, and I feel the new intense chill that seems to be the underbreath of even the hottest day, when I know that global warming may send our planet into a deep freeze even before my remaining years run out, then I think about what it is that truly matters to me. Not just as a human, but as an American.
I want a leader who can love us. And, truthfully, by our collective behaviour, we have made it hard to demand this. We are as we are, imperfect to the max, racist and sexist and greedy above all; still, I feel we deserve leaders who love us. We will not survive more of what we have had: leaders who love nothing, not even themselves. We know they don't love themselves because if they did they would feel compassion for us, so often lost, floundering, reeling from one bad thought, one horrid act to another. Killing, under order, folks we don't know; abusing children of whose existence we hadn't heard; maiming and murdering animals that have done us no harm.
I would say that, in my lifetime, it was only the Kennedys, in national leadership, who seemed even to know what compassion meant; certainly John, and then Bobby, were unafraid to grow an informed and open heart. (After he left the White House, President Carter blossomed into a sheltering tree of peace, quite admirably.)
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H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi:
The power of the Goddess is of love. Whatever She does with the whole world is through Her compassion and love. The whole body, the whole being of the Goddess is made of compassion and love and nothing else. This power gives full understanding of the reality and also this enlightens inside and outside. For example, if you love somebody, you know everything about that person. It has nothing to do with money. It's the highest, most valuable, very important powers that you have. Even when you think about something noble, something benevolent, this power is filled into that thought and then this thought fills in, into the universe, into your country, into individuals. The aim of this compassion and love is only one, to see everyone joyous, that’s all, joyous in the real sense of the word. This power cares for the collective as well as for the individual. It cares for the whole world as well as particular nation. All the time this power works, specially in modern times, to better the lives of people of the whole world. But unfortunately, not there are many countries like you (Russians), who have heart to feel the love of their Mother Goddess. So it's like an ocean of love and compassion that wants to touch every shore. It wants to touch every heart but some are just like stones.
(Moscow, 17/9/95)
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