Harnessing the Energies of Love

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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 or a fish hook or even a grinding stone. Instead she said it was “a healed femur.” The femur, of course, is the leg bone below the knee.

Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where a survival of the fittest mentality reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person’s hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion, she said, is the first sign of civilization.

While we have come along way in terms of civilization, when we look at the world around us, we realize that still have a long way to go in terms of compassion.

French geologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teihard 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.