Bruce Bisset: Love is answer to universe's questions

Bruce Bisset.

Funny the way life goes. And there's been quite a bit of it going around me this year, enough for even a good agnostic to ask a few questions of the universe -- though without expecting any clever answers.

The lack of which can make things a bit awkward, now that my wife's mother has passed away and the two of us are left parentless.

At which point you realise you're now part of the elder generation, the kaumatua, the ones who are expected to know what's what when (or rather, if) the younger ones ask.

At the same time my own generation is determinedly popping off at a fair clip, such that someone I've known is departing monthly. That rings the mortality bell.

Having just returned from a tribute gig for one of my oldest dearest friends, where all the old musos sat about swapping pills and medical adventure stories in scenes akin to morning roundup in a resthome, the realisation Christmas was upon us deepened my contemplative mood.

Sure, I can mutter "Bah, humbug!" as well as the next sceptic -- ardently, as far as the commercial farce capitalism makes of it is concerned -- but even if the very wise man whose birth the day honours did not exist, the message to come down from that time does.

As a humanist I would prefer to believe that he did exist, and would even go so far as to endorse him as a messiah.

For if "messiah" means an enlightened person who fully embraces every aspect of the human condition in concert with the immensity of the universe and is able to inspire others with transcendental insights then yes, from what fact we can glean, Jesus of Nazareth was such a person.

I do not have to believe in the gods, God, or no god -- or in any "godhood" for Christ -- to absorb and revere his message.

Indeed I prefer to believe Jesus was "simply" an extraordinary example of the heights to which human beings can be raised if circumstance and passion and inquiry allow. Being myself far short of such standard, I cannot say whether a little extra-terrestrial assistance plays a part. And the message? One word: Love.

"Love your neighbour as yourself" is as needed and relevant and inherently inclusive today as it ever was or will be.

Truly, love is all you need.

Sadly love is missing in many people's lives, in every place in this world.

Not that it's in short supply -- love is boundless, and always there should you reach for it -- but because it's ignored or downplayed as a frivolous "minor" emotion, so much less use than greed or self-importance or hate.

And these "more important" states hold sway to the extent many people don't even love themselves! Let alone their neighbours.

If Joseph, with his pregnant wife on a donkey, arrived at one of the 676 Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank today he could risk being shot on sight.

In working so assiduously to destroy ourselves and our planet, we humans are proving our race insane, and I would not be surprised if any god we once had has now forsaken us.

Yet salvation is one simple and intrinsically healing step away. All we need do is open our hearts to the magnificent chaotic beauty of creation and enfold it with love.

As every major religion espouses at its base, all solutions flow from there. Try it. You'll be awed. And the manifestations of death will no longer be our focus.

* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.