Home: The Unity of Love
In a Unity Magazine article from August 1996, a woman named Dianne wrote about a time when upper abdominal pain landed her in the hospital. Thinking she was experiencing gallbladder problems, Dianne’s doctor ordered several tests, none of which revealed a physiological cause for her pain. The doctor asked Dianne, “Is there anything going on in your life that might be causing this?” Depressed and feeling sorry for herself, Dianne replied, “There is nothing going on in my life. Absolutely nothing.” No reason to go home. Under doctor’s orders, Dianne stayed in the hospital under observation.
Dianne spent the next few days in self-pity, staring out the open door of her room and feeling despondent. Nights were mostly quiet as medicated people slept in respite from their pain. One person, however, did not sleep at night but yelled and wailed for hours at a time. Dianne asked a nurse about the night screamer. “We call her the howler,” the nurse replied. The “howler” was a teenager with severe mental retardation, with the mind of a 7-year-old. No one came to visit her and the nurses could hardly stand to take care of her because of her persistent screaming.
The next night Dianne listened carefully and realized that the girl’s howling was filled with terror and loneliness. It was clear to Dianne that the girl’s sounds of pain came from a place medicine could never reach. She considered how frightening the hospital could be to a seven-year-old, and she thought about what might make a seven-year-old feel better. The next day, Dianne called a florist, ordering an anonymous delivery.
A few hours later, a nurse approached the teenage girl with a bundle of balloons attached to a teddy bear and a music box that played, “Up, Up and Away.” The girl’s howls immediately stopped and Dianne heard instead a little giggle which grew to a big giggle. For the next few days, the howler became known as “the giggler.”
And what about Dianne? Dianne went home a day after her special delivery. Her hospital stay had been valuable. She had learned that stress was not the cause of her low energy. Rather, in Dianne’s words: “The feeling of uselessness, of emptiness, had been eating away at me body and soul. And that’s when I knew. That to ease the uselessness or fill my emptiness, I only have to ease and fill for someone else first.”
Dianne’s story beautifully illustrates the unifying power of Love. Love, one of our spiritual capacities, rises from within us — from the Infinite Source of Love aka GOD — to unify everything and everyone. Love is capable of its highest calling, which is Oneness Consciousness!!! Love plays out as compassion, caring, desire, service, and support; but our feelings and actions of love stem from the Love that we are! One with GOD. One with LOVE. Love is natural to us, because Love is our true nature. A Course in Miracles teaches: Heaven is not a place or a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect oneness.
Dianne’s awareness of perfect oneness had the only effect possible by the power of Love: the young patient’s fears were relieved by Dianne’s act of love; and, as important, Dianne herself experienced the unifying power of Love. You could say Dianne returned home, to herself.
