{"id":367,"date":"2012-11-12T14:37:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T19:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/?p=367"},"modified":"2013-01-06T14:40:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T19:40:36","slug":"the-mission-field-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/?p=367","title":{"rendered":"The Mission Field of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What color is love?<\/p>\n<p>What is its gender?<\/p>\n<p>Does it have an age?<\/p>\n<p>Does it have a political affiliation?<\/p>\n<p>Does it even have to be reserved for human beings?<\/p>\n<p>Love can be bestowed upon everyone, or upon any living creature. For example, if you don&#8217;t get out much, and don&#8217;t know anyone, but you have a dog or cat, you be love for your four-legged companion.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a no-brainer for most people. Especially people with pets. But here&#8217;s one that isn&#8217;t so obvious: the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>The Internet is &#8212; to use a Christian term &#8212; a mission field that stretches, literally, around the world.<\/p>\n<p>One way to be love is to not get embroiled in squabbles online. Don&#8217;t ramp up arguments to the point where Facebook friends react by blocking\/banning other Facebook friends.<\/p>\n<p>How do you do that? By not taking sides. By not drawing a line in the sand that says, in effect, &#8220;THIS is what I know to be true. YOUR way is wrong.&#8221; Doing that immediately bifurcates reality. It creates an us and them. My way, or your way. That&#8217;s where animosity begins.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve seen it. The anger. The heated arguments in Facebook posts. There are some nasty people &#8212; who may not even be truly nasty offline, in person &#8212; who are trying so hard to make their ideological points that they lose the ability to be kind. It exists on both sides of the political aisle, too. I&#8217;ve seen &#8220;Liberals&#8221; who are extremely angry and bitter against those who don&#8217;t share their views. Likewise, I&#8217;ve seen &#8220;Conservatives&#8221; who are dead-sure those on the other side of the aisle are hastening America&#8217;s demise. The chasm between them seems too vast to be bridged.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it is. But it&#8217;s worth a try to bridge it. And one way to accomplish that is to keep only-love mind.<\/p>\n<p>That means to be mindful of what you say and do in your world, where you are. <\/p>\n<p>So if, where you are, is sitting in front of a computer, or standing in line with your smartphone in hand, you can practice only-love mind by keeping your fingers from typing words that divide, rather than unite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What color is love? What is its gender? Does it have an age? Does it have a political affiliation? Does it even have to be reserved for human beings? Love can be bestowed upon everyone, or upon any living creature. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/?p=367\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[70,41,69],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonlyloveproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}