Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
You join me up here on Dartmoor.
It's a grey day,
A cold January day and I live right on the edge of Dartmoor and love coming up here daily just to take in the air.
Sometimes it's raining,
Today it's not and I can see up on the hillside just ahead of me a white Dartmoor pony.
These are semi-wild ponies that live out here on Dartmoor and she looks very beautiful contrasting against the dark green of the gorsebush behind her and actually reminds me of when I was walking my pilgrimage and walking through Wiltshire there are white horses carved on the chalky hillside in in Wiltshire and it feels like this pony here on Dartmoor is just reminding me of that that walk and that pilgrimage.
And today is a reflection about love.
In recent days you've probably heard me talk about a phrase that is really important for me at the moment,
Holding the line for love.
It keeps coming back to me,
I keep sharing it with people,
I keep exploring it more and more and there's an illustration of this for me which I want to share with you,
A story.
It's actually a story that was shared by one of my listeners on Insight Timer so I want to share it with you now and for me this epitomizes what it means to hold the line for love and she was explaining,
She lives in Australia and she was explaining that she was walking along Bondi Beach and she was approached by a woman with two young boys and this woman handed her a gift.
She handed her a piece of bread and two tea lights.
Now Bondi Beach,
Just to give a bit of context,
Has been sadly in the news in recent months because that was where a Jewish community who was celebrating were open fired on and people were killed and injured in that attack and it really rocked and shocked not just the Jewish community in Australia but Jewish communities across the world.
And I have been listening in and watching in on the unfolding crisis in the Middle East around Israel and Palestine and I've listened to the news and heard people talk passionately on both sides about what's right and wrong and none of what I've listened to or watched in the last few months and years has impacted me as much as this story because it felt as though this story of this woman with her two sons,
She was Jewish handing out a gift to a stranger who she didn't know what the views of that stranger were.
She was illustrating to her sons the world that she wanted to live in and as I see that story here in England on the other side of the world my sense is that it's about love,
It's about connection,
It's about shared humanity and it's about compassion.
For me she was holding the line for love,
She was actively holding the line for love,
Not through debates or trying to change opinions or saying things clever or writing articles,
She went out and she held the line of love by showing her boys what it meant to connect with other human beings.
And that story just keeps resonating for me,
I keep thinking of it,
I keep telling people about it,
The ripples of that story and that that story was told to me and that I now tell it to other people,
For me shows the power of love.
I was impacted by a wave and wash of love that arose in me as I heard that story.
I really felt love is powerful,
Not in a way of fighting or arms or making your point heard or known or frightening people or getting your own way or bullying,
No,
Love is powerful in a completely different way.
Love,
Living from a place of love,
Holding the line for love means that we connect,
Resonate,
Awaken in each other that which is true for us all.
In holding the line for love we connect with that which is true for all of us,
No exceptions,
Whatever our nationality or religion or outlook on life,
Holding the line for love is something I can do and want to do and will continue doing in my world and I would love to know your reflections on what holding the line for love might mean for you.
