Under the Fig Tree

Choosing Love in a Broken World

The bell of mindfulness is an invitation to stop, to breathe, and to return to what is real. It interrupts habit and asks for presence rather than reaction. When I hear such an invitation, whether literal or metaphorical, I become aware of how quickly my mind moves toward fear, judgment, and withdrawal. News of violence, especially violence carried out by systems meant to protect, exposes this reflex with painful clarity. My instinct is often to harden as a way of surviving what feels unbearable. Yet mindfulness reminds me that what I practice in these moments is shaping who I am becoming. The bell calls me back to the choice that matters most, which is whether I will remain human and rooted in love.

Mindfulness has helped me recognize a truth that feels both simple and demanding. Love is not something we must be taught, while hatred is. We do not come from the womb hating; we learn it through fear, injury, and repeated conditioning. We do not need to learn love; we come from the womb loving. In this sense, we are all born in Eden, formed in trust, dependence, and relational openness. The destructive forces of the world do not create us this way, but they train us out of it, teaching us to hide, defend, and dominate in order to survive. Once hatred has been learned, love does not vanish, but it must be relearned through attention, practice, and return.

The Gospel of John names this loss and return with theological depth and hope. Jesus speaks of a world shaped by forces that steal, kill, and destroy, and he declares that he has come so that we may have life in abundance, to the full, till it overflows. When Jesus calls himself the Door, he is not offering escape from the world, but passage back into the life for which the world was created. What was closed by Adam’s sin was not access to a garden, but access to communion with God, one another, and creation itself. Jesus stands as the living threshold back to Eden, reopening what fear and sin locked shut. Salvation, in this light, is restoration of our original humanity rather than avoidance of a broken world.

Psychology has given me language to understand why this restoration is both necessary and difficult. Self-Determination Theory shows that human beings share universal psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these needs are supported, people tend toward growth, cooperation, and well-being. When they are chronically denied, predictable patterns of distress emerge, including aggression, withdrawal, and control-seeking behavior. These patterns are not evidence of inherent evil, but of sustained deprivation and fear. The universality of human needs does not flatten injustice, but exposes how deeply unjust it is when social structures systematically deny what human flourishing requires.

Practices such as Nonviolent Communication have helped me attend to these needs in the midst of real relationships and real conflict. Nonviolent Communication offers a framework for listening beneath behavior and responding in ways that preserve dignity rather than escalate harm. As I have reflected on this practice through mindfulness, I have come to see that the way we speak is habitual and that our reactions are shaped by what we rehearse over time. Hatred can feel instinctive only because it has been practiced repeatedly. Love, once buried beneath fear and injury, must be practiced again until it becomes familiar. Mindfulness allows me to notice the habit before it fully takes hold and to choose a different response.

Christian faith gives this work its moral gravity, while mindfulness gives it staying power. Christianity insists that the way we treat others is holy because Christ has entered the world and claimed it as the place of God’s saving work. Buddhism teaches attention to the present moment and reminds us that nothing, including our habits, is permanent. Together, they allow for repentance without shame and commitment without despair. I fall back into old habits often, but mindfulness helps me notice the return and choose again. Formation happens not through perfection, but through faithful return.

The Book of Revelation carries this promise to its completion. Jesus speaks again of doors, opening what no one can shut and standing at the threshold inviting repentance and renewed communion. At the end of the vision, the tree of life stands in the midst of the city, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. Eden is not abandoned, but fulfilled and expanded so that its healing reaches the whole world. To pray “Come, Lord Jesus” is to consent to that healing and to its beginning in us now.

The bell of mindfulness does not demand that we solve the world’s suffering, but it does ask us to stop running from it. It invites us to breathe, to return, and to remember who we were before fear taught us otherwise. In a world trained by violence and habit, love often returns quietly, as presence rather than performance. When I hear that bell, I am reminded that Christ stands at the Door, Eden remains open, and the path home begins with attention. In that listening, love is relearned, and life begins again.