Reverend Ed Bacon - 8 Habits of Love: Overcome Fear and Transform Your Life

The day Love was illumined,

Lovers learned from You how to burn, Beloved.

The flame was set by the Friend

to give the moth a gate to enter.

Love is a gift from the Beloved to the Lover

Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

I invite you on an adventure. It is a lifelong journey that will take you to the deepest, most sacred place within yourself. That powerful inner sanctuary resides in each of usevery human being on earthand when we access this sanctuary, it grounds us in love, giving us the courage and resilience to stand up to fear. When we open our hearts and minds to loves abundance, we can transform not only our own lives, but also the lives of those around us, making the world a more just, peaceful, and caring place.

It has taken me a lifetime to understand that learning to embrace love and practice its habits at every turn are the deepest responsibilities we have as humans. I invite you to take a place by my side on this long and eventful journey, so that we may travel together, along with many others, toward a better life and a better world.

Those who fly through the sound barrier report that the cockpit shakes the most just before breakthrough. Similarly, the Habits of Love described in these pages took form for me through some shaky times: deciding to become a minister; leaving the religion of my childhood; working in different parts of the United States with very different congregations; learning to be a father and a grandfather; sharing my life with Hope, my wife. But the first glimpses of what would lead me on this turbulent and wondrous journey came when I was still just a little boy.

We were living in the small town of Jesup, along a historic railway stop in pine-studded, rural Georgia. My father was a Baptist preacher, school principal, and later the county school superintendent, and my mother was a teacher. Our home was a busy and comfortable one, its walls decorated with religious art, its shelves housing countless prized knickknacks. Hanging above the chest of drawers in my childhood bedroom was a simple framed picture of Jesus praying. For 18 years, I laid my head to sleep each night and opened my eyes each morning gazing at this image.

I remember every detail vividly. Jesus, dressed in a humble tunic, kneels in the grass in a lush garden by a rough-hewn boulder, his face open, upturned, and serene. Coming from above is a bright beam of light that bathes his features in warmth. Though he seems to be welcoming that light into himself, his expression suggests that he already knows it exists inside him. He is already home. Infused by the spirit of love, he recognizes the inner sanctuary that allows him to base his life in the force field of love. And so I, too, felt safe and consoled and empowered, night after night, dwelling in the constant light of love and acceptance.

Yet there were other messages I was receiving as a child that contradicted this deep and growing understanding that all humankind is connected by the energy of love. A version of God that I heard preached about from my fathers pulpit was one who was wrathful, punitive, and condemning. All around me I saw people who were marginalized and suffering, in particular African Americans, and I often struggled with a sense of inner confusion that left me feeling isolated, unknown and unknowing. There was another image I encountered during those years that only emphasized for me the conflict between these differing experiences of reality.

One summer afternoon, I wandered into my parents bedroom while they were away. On a table by the window lay the family Bible. The stories inside were illustrated with exquisitely detailed etchings, in all the colors of the rainbow. I loved leafing through the pages and looking at these picturesexcept one day when I landed on the pages of the book of Revelation.

There was a glorious green field filled with people. But beneath their feet, the ground was opening up to reveal the orange flames of hell, reaching upward to consume all those who had not been saved. The field was crowded with men, women, and children, some of whom were being lifted up toward light-filled, billowing cloudsthese people were supposedly Christs elect. Others had flames lapping at their ankles and expressions of horror on their facesthese had been denied Christs love and were destined to burn in hell.

What I remember most clearly was that certain families were torn apart by this division between good and evil, those to be saved and those to be damned. Some children fell to their demise while their happy parents were lifted up. The reverse was also the case. It was traumatizing not only in respect to myselfwhere would I end up?but also in respect to others I knew and loved. Where would they end up? I grasped that even in my small town there were some individuals I knew whom I would never see again, without knowing ahead of time which ones. I felt nauseated, slammed the Bible shut, and ran from the room.

The experience of gazing upon these two imposing, contradictory images of love and fear launched me on my own life-changing journey toward self-discovery, healing, and ministry. It registered in my soul that these two conflicting narratives could not coexist, and that I would have to jettison one in order to fully embrace the other.

After that, in countless seemingly ordinary incidents I began to recognize the critical role of love as a liberating, joy-filled, and guiding force. This growing awareness embedded in me an unshakeable certainty that within each and every human being there lives a core of love and goodness. To be sure, the world and its inhabitants suffer from real evil. Yet at the same time, the world is not divided into persons who are good or evil, blessed or damned. Rather, each of us carries within us a core of sacredness that no evil can damage or distort.

We have the ability to change the course of our lives when we become aware of that core of sacrednesswhich I call the Belovedand begin to live with it as our guide. Whenever we have a flash of love, innocence, acceptance, inspiration, awe, or wonder, or were moved to tears or filled with joy, we must remind ourselves: this is the real me. We must not let such moments simply pass us by. We must stop and appreciate those moments and act on themand ask that we receive more of them in the future. This book is my call to you, asking you to embark on this never-ending adventure, as I have done, and take your own steps with this book as your guiding force.

Beneath our wounds and resentments, our fears and insecurities, our neediness and addictions, we are all loved deeply and unconditionally. We therefore each carry within us the capacity to love deeply, unconditionally, and fearlessly. It is through practicing the Habits of Love that we can transform our lives by freeing ourselves from fear. In every concentric circle of human interaction, we can be instruments of bringing people together instead of drawing lines of enmity to separate us.

When we embrace the eight habits I lay out in this book, we recognize that our tired and reflexive responses to our loved ones, and even to strangers, fail to take into consideration their intentions and dreams and our shared goals. We realize that with our children, we can better embrace spontaneity and adventure once weve stepped back from constrictive fears and expectations. In our communities, with our hearts open, we instinctively become less reactive and more responsible. At work, with our minds open, we are less prone to misunderstandings and more likely to feel deeper connections. Our interactions with others become infused with grace and kindness.

When we employ the energy of love, we are leaving fear behind us and choosing instead to make our way toward a new, inspiring goal: living our lives with open hearts.