Giving for the sake of loving....

[RevKathyV]

It is said that love is giving without expectation...

I heard this earlier today....

The sun never says to the earth you owe me...and that love lights up the sky....

I thought that was beautiful...and a good example of how we should treat one another...not out of expectation for reward or repayment but out of love....What do you think?

[Chippingaway]

Rev kathy...

i think unselfish love is of the moment. Let me explain.....It is given and then forgotten. No going back to re accounting that we 'loved' or that it made us feel good, or rechecking to see if it had an affect. There is a spontinaity about it that can come only from a sense of "more then enough for ME" whether it is in time money or sweat. There may really not be enough for the "me", but there is that sense there is. i'm not advocating loving one's self into poverty, for all that does is make one more needy person in the world.

Am full of 'i think" today. i think one of the greatest of unselfish loves is attitude adjustment regarding others, viewing others, with thier meaness, thier cussidness thier weaknessess and thier short sightedness, as above all human. Even above god. Because god can take it, while there is great suffering we cause each other because we don't feel comfortable with our humaness reflected back at us. We don't have to like it, we don't have to approve of it, but we don't need to be afraid of it. We can even contend with it, but never forgetting it is human. Sometimes it means, we must take our oh-so-beloved 'i am right' and leave the field to another rather then destroy them.
It's kinda like loving the unlovely.

[vivamis123]

For me love is love...I see no difference. In the state of love...I can but love.

[mooomooo]

God is alive and can be seen depending on your ''purity of intentions''.

God is presented to us every second in what we see and our own behaviour . When you see a hungry ''beggar' look beyond him/her and see God in representation in this 'down and out'' person ..God is all of us ,,even the homeless beggar.


Look at the beggar and go beyond that and see God in him/her and realize that although you are giving money to that beggar you are also giving to God . When you help one in need you are helping God and God does see what you are doing and this will bring you closer to our Lord..

Help the beggar and you are helping God..so do it for God as you help the unfortunate beggar..

[shaw-n]

momo, better to help 'em because it's the right thing to do. They are family and one should always help one's family, doesn't matter which mother they came from.
If God needed anything from us then he/she/it would not be God.

[Asimov]

Originally Posted by RevKathyV

It is said that love is giving without expectation...

I heard this earlier today....

The sun never says to the earth you owe me...and that love lights up the sky....

The sun isn't a sentient being...

I thought that was beautiful...and a good example of how we should treat one another...not out of expectation for reward or repayment but out of love....What do you think?

What do you mean reward or repayment? In any traders principle, giving something because you receive gratitude or an emotional product in return is considered a trade of one thing of value for another.

That completely contradicts your statement that we should do something out of love, which is doing something because we receive another thing in return.

[RevKathyV]

Asimov, I am assuming you are not very poetically minded. This was a beautiful statemnet which was more or less a metaphor...either that or you are nit picking...which is ok...I still love you....

The sun never says to the earth you owe me...and that love lights up the sky....

When you do something out of love it is not because you expect anything. You may not even receive that persons love in return and it shouldn't matter. Loving someone is not a business of trade it is giving without thought of return. You just do it because....of course it may give you a good feeling to give. Although you may receive this joy or something else in return that is not your intention for the giving. I was trained as a minister to give love to everyone unselfishly. As hard as this may be for you to conceive some people can actually do this...at least part of the time...

[Asimov]

Originally Posted by RevKathyV

Asimov, I am assuming you are not very poetically minded. This was a beautiful statemnet which was more or less a metaphor...either that or you are nit picking...which is ok...I still love you....

The sun never says to the earth you owe me...and that love lights up the sky....

Both, it may be fun to anthropomorphize in stories, but when you're trying to make a statement, it becomes meaningless. Poetic or not.

When you do something out of love it is not because you expect anything.

If you do something out of love, you are already getting something. You helping someone is you doing something that makes you feel good. You expect it to feel good because you've already done it before.

If you don't do something out of love (because you want to), and do it out of obligation, you're not expecting something. You do it even though you don't want to, but think you have to.

That's the ONLY unselfish action that could ever occur.

You may not even receive that persons love in return and it shouldn't matter.

What if they hate you for it? Just because you have good intentions doesn't mean it will always yield good results. Point in fact, a lot of the best intentions yield terrible results. Does that mean the action is good, just because you intended it to be? Does that mean that the action is loving, just because you intended it to be?

You might feel good about an action, but it be completely disastrous in consequence.

Anyways, I'm not talking about receiving someones love in return. I'm saying you're already getting something out of it and expecting something because you're doing it out of love.

Loving someone is not a business of trade it is giving without thought of return. You just do it because....of course it may give you a good feeling to give. Although you may receive this joy or something else in return that is not your intention for the giving.

Your intention for the giving is that it makes you feel good, that's why you do it. If your intention is to do it because you think you have to, that isn't love. It's a warped and twisted sense of love.

I was trained as a minister to give love to everyone unselfishly. As hard as this may be for you to conceive some people can actually do this...at least part of the time...

Just as I said, warped and twisted. You can't train someone to love, it's a connection developed between two people.

[Luguber]

Originally Posted by Asimov

If you do something out of love, you are already getting something. You helping someone is you doing something that makes you feel good. You expect it to feel good because you've already done it before.

If you don't do something out of love (because you want to), and do it out of obligation, you're not expecting something. You do it even though you don't want to, but think you have to.

That's the ONLY unselfish action that could ever occur.

If you want to be pessimistic, the second case is as selfish as the first one: you act out of obligation, in order not to feel bad afterwards.

Even if it's possible to label love's labour selfish, that doesn't mean that it is to be looked down at. The Buddhist view, the way I've understood it, is indeed that actions are selfish if you expect to feel good making others happy. Never the less, good deeds are good deeds.

But I recognize a third possibility: you do something just because it feels the right or perhaps only thing to do. Let's say you drive on a remote country road and see a car with a flat tyre. The driver has obvious problems changing, and there may be hours before the next vehicle appears. If you stop to assist, you probably haven't even had time to think of the feeling of goodness you'll experience afterwards, and even less will you have expected any other tangible or intangible reward.

I would label such an act unselfish, but not from love.

[sendy47]

I had a teacher in high school that taught no human ever does anything with out a return..no one at anytime does anything for nothing...it use to really upset me that he taught this to such young people...but over the years it is my experience that he was right on the money...that does not make things bad but a reality none the less...less someone can show it to be different...the questions and answers will go in circles...again language just does not have enough words..we seem to have used them up and invented ones that you must study to learn there meaning to only find that there is much easier ways to express there is no need to make things so complicated...anyway i am getting off track...