God is Love

Okay, pick your jaw up off the floor.  It will become more clear later, but first a back story.
Several years ago I read an article that was suggested to me about one of the bus riders through Georgia in the sixties.  I cannot for the life of me remember his name or I would put a link to the story.  In the article he talked about the pacifism of Martin Luther King and the movement in the sixties.  He talked about how when they would get off the bus, they knew what was waiting for them.  He knew that there were men with fists and clubs and guns that were going to harm him.  He knew that the only way to not get angry or to hate the men doing it was to love them.  The only way to not strike back was to love who they were, not what they were doing, but who they were.  I read that article years ago and the love he felt for his abusers astounded me.  It was after reading that story that I determined that I too was going to become a pacifist.  I too would love.  I felt the power that a true love can wield.  I believed in that kind of love.  The part that I found the most confusing to me was, how could someone who so believed in what love can accomplish know so little about what it was?  How could I, a person who can honestly say that I love everyone, let his marriage crumble around him?  I have struggled many nights and deleted many blogs on this topic.  Then, in a talk I listened to by Pembra Chodron she explained that a truly loving person must start within himself.  The first person in list of people that you would wish to find happiness and the root of happiness was yourself. She explained that if I could make even a pinprick into the reservoir, over time the true nature of love would wear a larger and larger hole.  This is described in many books as frozen emotions or many different thing by many different people.
Today, as I was driving back to S-ville I was thinking about a time that the boys and I were in the car listening to "The Once and Future Carpenter" by The Avett Brothers.  Jeffrey asked me what he meant when he sang, "If I live the life I'm given, I won't be scared to die."  I explained it to him as, if you do your best in everything that you try you will be happy knowing that you could have done nothing more.  As I followed this thought through, I remembered previous times of emotional tumult in my life.  I remember saying to myself and others around me, "I know that they were doing the best they could at the time."  I began thinking about my marriage.  If I could offer that kind of love and forgiveness to others then why not myself?  I know that I did the very best that I was able to at the time.  I know that my wife had done the very best that she could at the time.  And that we both still are.  As I pondered this, my eyes began to tear up.  But the difference this time was that they were tears of joy.  I could feel the love for myself, for my wife, for my family for all others beginning to well up inside of me again.  I felt as though my small pinpricks of effort had released a small but steady stream of true love within me again.  I began to feel as though I am truly accepting who I am.  I am truly accepting of it all.
This is where the god part comes in.  I believe that love is my god.  I don't worship it in a traditional sense.  I don't give it sacrifices in a traditional sense.  I don't hold books about it up as sacred or not from human hands.  But it is my god none the less.  I believe that this is the love that christians call God, that muslims call Allah, that the chinese call Chi, that the buddhists call the Buddha Nature, that every race of man has had a word for.  I believe that love is the reason we are here.  It is love that makes an existence on this planet possible.  You may call it anything that you like, but to me it is love.  It is true, undemanding, heartfelt love.  It is the love that allows forgiveness and brings peace.  Both I am in great need of.