One of my many favorite creators on Substack and X is James Lucas who posts about beauty and truth. Both of which I believe are attributes of the Divine. On a recent X post He shared Roman epitaphs created for their dog’s tombs. One of them hit my heart hard even as a cat person.
“I am in tears while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home with my own hands 15 years ago.”
Anonymous words about an ancient, deceased pet, triggered something in my modern-day soul. Like a Vegas midsummer monsoon, my face was suddenly streaming with a watery weep. Crying not about a canine I never knew; instead crying about a feline I did know.
A little cat who left my life over five years ago. Two-thousand-year-old words that made another human feel deeply two thousand years later. An avalanche of memories, as I recalled when we brought our kitty home for the first time and when we had to say good-bye twelve years later when he left our heartbroken home. Marking our hearts and forever changing my life like only a pet’s love can.
This inscription of grief reminding me that Love is what binds the universe together both the seen an unseen; past and present. Love is what sustains our soul and nurtures our heart’s hope. Love is both purpose and promise; approach and action. God is love.
Love is the deepest human connection we can create with one another and all of creation. It’s the reason why I can read a 2000-year-old anonymous pet epitaph and sob. Because I have had to say goodbye to a pet I deeply loved. Because I have known both the joy and sorrow that comes through unconditionally loving another creature. Because I have experienced love through sharing my heart and my feelings with humanity.
Genuine love is never intellectual because it’s fundamentally about feeling with your heart, not thinking with your head. And while God certainly has created other creatures who are intelligent and emotional, humans are the pinnacle of creation. We alone were created in the image of God. We alone can harness our emotions to do great good or extreme evil. We alone are the only species to have domain over all of creation.
While love should always be unconditional, we can condition our hearts to love those we know and don’t know by employing empathy, leading with kindness and living humbly. Qualities that test even the saintly among us and I’m certain will continue to challenge me. A trial we only overcome through the mercy, grace and love of God.
Empathy allows us to connect with people we may never know, like an ancient Roman pet owner. Yet, through our shared experience of losing a beloved pet, I can understand their pain because I’ve experienced similar loss. I can feel deeply for a stranger simply because I can feel deeply within my own heart. This gift to walk in someone else’s shoes, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn; allows us to connect with outsiders, those who have passed, and even our enemies.
Kindness is a gift of the Spirit. It lubricates the heart and soothes the soul. It allows us to find ways to be generous and gentle and graceful with one another. It allows us to connect with those who are different from us, those who have struggled mightily with adversity, and even our enemies.
Humility helps us recognize that no human, including ourselves, can fill our lives with genuine peace and purposeful goodness. When we wash ourselves with humility, our hearts are cleansed of selfishness, arrogance, prejudice and every self-centered trait that impedes love. An unassuming heart values every human, welcomes the visitor, and even embraces our enemies.
When we share our feeling hearts, we create an opportunity to be better neighbors and even better humans. What binds our relationships is no longer about ego but love. This is why our words and actions truly matter because they become the material manifestation of trust. Which is why lying, deceit and manipulating language is so corrosive not only for the relationship but the larger community.
Opening our heart, feeling something outside of ourselves, connects us not only with truth and beauty, faith and hope, but ultimately Love. The gift of intellect allows us to think with our head, but the gift of emotion allows us to love with our heart. Both gifts define human purpose, but Love is what breathes life into the human soul.
Peace. God loves you.
If you want to learn more about how my spiritual awakening came to be, you can read about it in Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening; available on Amazon and across all platforms in print or electronic or audio.