Love Your Enemies.....

 

I came upon this picture the other day and thought it was appropriate for a Thanksgiving post... We had an unconventional Thanksgiving.  The kids are with their dad (He is the chef afterall) so Keith and I had strip steaks cooked on the George Foreman grill.  It could become the next holiday tradition (similar to Easter pizza) I don't have any deep insights about loving my enemies so I found some quotes on the web...and posted them below.  I hope everyone had a blessed and happy Thanksgiving. 

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

"Rage is a powerful energy that with diligent practice can be transformed into fierce compassion. However much we disagree with our enemies, our task is to identify with them. They too feel justified in their point of view."
— Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

 

"To get rid of an enemy one must love him. "
— Leo Tolstoy

 

"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

 

"If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding."
— Dalai Lama XIV

 

"You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

 

""Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.""
— Thomas Merton (Passion for Peace; Reflections on War and Nonviolence)

 

"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence."
— George Orwell