What would it be like to love our enemies?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. There are abundant examples on the news, and on social media, of folks acting out this idea that anyone who does something we don’t like is our enemy, and once they are our enemy, it is culturally normative to insult them, to bully them, even to threaten their lives and their families. Jesus knows he is calling his students to something counter-cultural when he says “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

What would it be like to love our enemies? I find it hard even to hold those two concepts in my heart at the same time… enemy… and love. I want to be clear that when I use the word “love” I don’t mean “letting people abuse us or others.” Abusive behavior absolutely has to be named, and we have to create cultural limits for what behavior is allowed. Instead I am talking about maintaining compassion in our own hearts. I must confess that when I see the face or hear the voice of certain political figures, when I hear certain ideas, I turn away, I turn the channel, I walk out of the room. So if I accept this challenge, it is going to take intention and awareness.

The Buddhists suggest that we start with a ground of compassion and openness. A tradition called Loving-kindness Meditation helps us cultivate such a frame of mind. There are many versions of this practice, this one is from American Buddhist Teacher Jack Cornfield. First we call to mind a person we care about. We remember that feeling of caring, that feeling of compassion. We make room for it in our bodies and hearts and establish it there with these words:

May you be filled with lovingkindness.
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May you be well in body and mind.
May you be at ease and happy.

The traditional Buddhist practice does not rush this process. You cannot will yourself to feel compassionate, you can’t force yourself, you can only open yourself up to it, soften and allow it in. You can take as long as you need to establish that foundation of compassion- days, weeks, years. When you are ready, you extend compassion to yourself -- even the parts of ourselves that judges and hates my enemies. Even the part of us that is hard as a rock with hatred and anger. I invite that part of myself into my heart, into the stream of compassion like a child climbing into his mother’s lap. And like a parent listening to their child tell of the cruel playground bully, I just listen, returning again and again to the ground of compassion. This process takes as long as it takes. And if you choose, if you are willing to consider that maybe each of us has some small role to play in increasing the compassion in the world, in reducing the number of enemies in the world, in creating the kind of collaborative solutions this world needs, you can invite someone with whom you have a difficult relationship, even one who feels like an enemy into that space of compassion. It can be hard keep our hearts open to people who challenge us, people who make us angry, but in truth the practice of learning to keep our hearts open allows us to stay open to the Spirit even in the presence of our enemies. Surely that is when we need Spirit most.

The culture all around shows us, day after day, what happens when we lash out at our enemies with hate. Perhaps it’s time to break that vicious cycle of retribution and violence, and turn instead to the slow, vulnerable work of cultivating compassion, of weaving and re-weaving connections. We are called to love one another as God loves us- unconditionally and without exception.