After Mothers' Day

The family into which we are born is a template for what comes after. If we are fortunate, mother love is the foundation of all the rest.

Dad is there behind the camera

Love makes the world go round according to Bob Merrill who wrote the signature song for the Broadway musical Carnival. More about that later. Just now, let me knock the corners off that metaphor. 

Nothing currently makes the world go round. It's motion around the sun was established as the solar system was aggregating from interstellar dust under the influence of gravity. The rotation of Earth on its axis began 4.5 billion years ago when another large object collided with Earth, a random and violent event that had nothing to do with love. After the impact, an Earth day lasted about 5 hours by current reckoning. Since then, the rotation has gradually slowed down because of tidal forces. 

Nothing makes the world go round. It will continue to go round until something stops it. Like many metaphors, this one persists because it is evocative and familiar and not because it is accurate. The metaphor is a poor fit because it refers to the cycles of human life which, by contrast with the world's rotation, require constant effort. It is clear that love is a potent motive in that context. It is, however, not the only  potent motive. There is an extensive range of mental faculties, sensation, perception, memory, reason, intuition, imagination, and numerous pleasant and unpleasant emotional states which keep human lives moving through their cycles by informing and directing behaviour. How remarkable it is that love has been singled out as the prime mover of our species.

It is not. Check out the News. Between the Taliban blowing up schoolgirls and telecom high pressure salespersons taking advantage of vulnerable seniors you will find flowers being delivered to elderly women (and men so nobody gets left out) for Mother's Day. So there is love, but there is also a dreary catalogue of other stuff, all of it contributing to cycles of birth, regeneration and death.

Love was an important motive in some of our birth families and is the prime mover of the imaginary world in which we would choose to live. Any alternative leaves us aggressive, frightened, despairing and alone. The reason we celebrate and honour Love is that we won't get the world we want unless we make it happen one loving action at a time.

The world does what the world does.

We have a say in what happens next.

God is in us with this.