Harnessing the Energies of Love

Famous anthropologist Margaret Meed was once asked about the earliest sign of civilization in any given culture. Surprisingly, the answer was not a clay pot, a fish hook, or even a grinding stone. Instead, she said it was a healed femur, the leg bone above the knee. 

Mead explained that one would not find a femur that had been healed where a survival of the fittest mentality reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to hunt and gather on behalf of the injured person until the leg healed. The evidence of this type of compassion, she said, is the first sign of civilization.

While we have come along, we don’t have to look far to see tremendous need. 

French geologist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

Let us pray: We want to harness the energies of love for you, O God. In our own lives, we pray for healing and wholeness. Meet us at the deepest point of our need today. And then even as we are being healed, help us to be compassionate, merciful, and loving to others; for we remember that it is in giving that we receive. Amen.