This is the preamble to the US Constitution: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I have a friend whose politics are 180 degrees from mine, but whose has one of the most loving hearts I know. He always wears a baseball cap that says We the People. I know that what he hears in that preamble to the US Constitution is different than what I hear. But I know that we are friends because we meet heart to heart, not politics to politics.
On the other side of the spectrum from my friend is my leftwing older brother and his generation, who believe so strongly in the Constitution that it is the rock that forms the firm foundation of every cause for which they have fought and stood up for their entire lives.
Groups whose agendas I have a challenging time supporting base their right to exist on the Constitution.
And groups whose purpose I cherish do the same.
That is why this document is widely regarded and lauded around the world the heart and soul of these not-so United States — the oldest democracy in the world.
And it begins with one word: WE.
The word that I have chosen to guide this month’s heart-centered practice of joy and presence and living Love.
The fact that such diverse groups can cherish the same document is what we means.
The fact that this document gives everyone the right to speak their truth is why I can write this blog.
And the first two phrases of this preamble give us all our collective directive: WE (the people) . . . in order to form a more Perfect Union. . .
We means all of us. Every single one of us. Understanding that we are not a nation of I’s or me’s, but one nation forming a We the People.
And what are we continually trying to do? To form a MORE Perfect Union.
In other words, we are continually trying to be better at being We the People.
And how do we do this?
If you asked each me/I in this country, you’d bet millions of different answers.
But the document doesn’t read Each one of us or every person.
It reads WE the People.
There’s our clue: It means that when we need to be present to the well-being of We the People, we have to act like We the People. And that means finding the one thing that we all have in common. And that is Love.
We are all here to do the same thing: To love and to be loved. To express Love. To emanate Love. To show up in Love. To live Love. Period. The end.
That’s what the existence of every baby or puppy shows us. That’s what everyone says at the end of their lives. That it’s all about Love.
So for We the People to keep doing our level best to form a MORE Perfect Union — and the word is union, meaning joining together as one — we have to do one thing and one thing only: Live Love.
That may sound totally fluffy and pie in the sky in a world that seems and divided and divisive as our world. But the politicians or supposed leaders who don’t understand this become footnotes to history or stand for the evil that Love rises up to eradicate in the stories of our past.
Whereas those who understand the Power of Love change the world. People such as Nelson Mandela, who wrote: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
People such as Gandhi, who wrote: “I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal.”
And people such as Martin Luther King Jr who wrote: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Each of these great Civil Right leaders, who changed the face of their country’s histories understood that We the People, in order to form a more Perfect Union, much invoke and live by the Power of Love.
Gandhi said that the force of Love is the cohesive power that holds the whole world together. He reminds us that we have evidence of the Power of Love working at every step — and he believed that the universe would disappear without the existence of Love. He points out, however, that every single person in the word depends on Love for their existence. . . but that this is not what history records. Because, as Gandhi says: “History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul..”
The majority of us will never ever appear in a history book. But we WILL continue to be We the People, trying to form that more Perfect Union. And in order to keep perfecting that Union, we must keep living Love.
What the media and history keeps wanting us to believe is that there is something more powerful, more important, more urgent than living Love. What the people who have made history for good know is that the only thing that matters is living Love.
So that is exactly what the heart-centered practice of We the People is: To live Love. And to keep living Love.
Always. All Ways.
