Anthony Bernard, Highlighting the needy, writes for the Journal.

Exmouth Journal: Exmouth Community Food Larder manager Anthony Bernard.Exmouth Community Food Larder manager Anthony Bernard. (Image: Archant)

'All you need is love' - or so the Beatles' song goes! But "love" is very over used word. Its meaning can extend from a long term 'truly, madly, deeply' experience to transient sexual attraction, or a preference for a special book or picture.

In English we pay more attention to "rain" which has lots of descriptive words and phrases for example: showers, drizzle, cats and dogs, scotch mist and 'fly's wee wee'.

The opposites of love are hate, greed, envy, revenge, sexual attraction and power-seeking - all stronger emotions than love.

Just as war is active and peace is passive, serious love and caring are a lengthy but weak emotions.

The weakest force in science is gravity. Electricity and magnetism drive motors and generators, nuclear forces holds atoms and molecules together.

It takes the great mass of our planet for an apple to fall and for the sun to hold planets in orbit. But a Black Hole is a huge mass of collapsed stars creating so much gravity that nothing can escape, not even light rays.

So it is very very black, but absolutely not a hole!! Our known universe is expanding, starting from the big bang - or so the current theories run - but gravity will eventually pull it all back into the huge crunch!!

Similarly with love - a weak emotion which could have the power to over-ride all the other forces and emotions, including greed, corruption and prejudice if extended universally.

Every journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step; we can now add that every pandemic starts with a single virus, every war with a single greedy ambition,

Einstein and Isaiah both tried to describe the indescribable. Isaiah (55 v 8) explains how the Creator's ways are not our ways; further from our ways than we could ever imagine.

Einstein, with Relativity 3,000 years later, states that the universe does not work any way we could have imagined - nuclear power demonstrates this is real.

Meanwhile, not knowing Isaiah or Jesus Christ, many peoples around the world recognised the Great Spirit, Creator of the mountains, rivers and plains, and understood the need to live in harmony with each other and with the natural world. Each expressed this differently; my phrasing fits Chief Seattle's perceptions from his great oration of 1854; others could rephrase it better to fit Asian thinking - many know it to be fundamental Christian belief.

The pandemic repeats and reinforces these beliefs.

We already see an increase in people caring for others around us; worldwide we now know that until everyone is vaccinated the virus will find pockets in which to mutate and restart another pandemic.

So the scramble for vaccines needs to be redirected to getting vaccines to all the developing world, to all the needy people everywhere!! In the UK we are ahead in this challenge and well placed to lead.

However, reducing overseas aid at a time when everyone is struggling seems a backward step - notwithstanding the huge sums involved.

Meanwhile, people are dying around the world from all the previous troubles in addition to this wretched virus, so very many people need help.

"Love is all we need" - the opposite of hate, division, prejudice, greed and corruption. When that is universally accepted, humanity will have won - and I believe the virus will go back to sleep.

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