Faith in God is not just faith to believe in spiritual ideas. It’s to have confidence in Love itself. It’s to have confidence in reality itself. At its core, reality is okay. God is in it. God is revealed in all things, even through the tragic and sad, as the revolutionary doctrine of the cross reveals!
—Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love
Father Richard Rohr reminds us that we are never separate from the love of God:
We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God’s love is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another breath, it means that God is choosing us now and now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things.
To become aware of God’s loving presence in our lives, we must accept that human culture is in a mass hypnotic trance. We’re sleepwalkers. All great religious teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally “see”; we have to be taught how. Jesus says further, “If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light” (Luke 11:34). Religion is meant to teach us how to witness and be present to reality. That’s why the Buddha and Jesus say with one voice, “Be awake.” Jesus talks about “staying watchful” (Matthew 25:13; Luke 12:37; Mark 13:33–37), and “Buddha” means “I am awake” in Sanskrit.
All spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of illusions so we can be more fully present to what is. These disciplines exist so that we can see what is, see who we are, and see what is happening. What is is love, so much so that even the tragic will be used for purposes of transformation into love. It is God, who is love, giving away God every moment as the reality of our life. Who we are is love, because we are created in God’s image. What is happening is God living in us, with us, and through us as our unique manifestation of love. And each one of us is a bit different because the forms of love are infinite. [1]
May we pray together:
God, lover of life, lover of these lives,
God, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists:
It is your love that keeps it all alive….
May we live in this love.
May we never doubt this love.
May we know that we are love,
That we were created for love,
That we are a reflection of you,
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness.
We are because you are. [2]
Love Beyond
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considers the power of love that Jesus revealed at his death:
Few words in the New Testament more clearly and solemnly express the magnanimity of Jesus’ spirit than that sublime utterance from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” [Luke 23:34]. This is love at its best.…
The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of revenge. [Humanity] has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, [people] continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.
Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with [forceful] love.
What a magnificent lesson! Generations will rise and fall; [people] will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation; but ever and again this noble lesson of Calvary will be a nagging reminder that only goodness can drive out evil and only love can conquer hate. [1]
Brian McLaren invites us to practice revolutionary love:
Revolutionary love means loving as God would love: infinitely, graciously, extravagantly. To put it in more mystical terms, it means loving with God, letting divine love fill me and flow through me, without discrimination or limit, as an expression of the heart of the lover, not the merit of the beloved, including the correctness of the beloved’s beliefs.…
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus doesn’t teach a list of beliefs to be memorized and recited. Instead, he teaches a way of life that culminates in a call to revolutionary love. This revolutionary love goes far beyond conventional love, the love that distinguishes between us and them, brother and other, or friend and enemy (Matthew 5:43). Instead, we need to love as God loves, with non-discriminatory love that includes even the enemy.…
We’re used to thinking of the real differences in the world as among religions: you are Buddhist, I am Christian, she is Jewish, he is atheist. But I wonder if that way of thinking is becoming irrelevant and perhaps even counter-productive. What if the deeper question is not whether you are a Christian, Buddhist, or atheist, but rather, what kind of Christian, Buddhist, or atheist are you? Are you a believer who puts your distinct beliefs first, or are you a person of faith who puts love first? Are you a believer whose beliefs put you in competition and conflict with people of differing beliefs, or are you a person of faith whose faith moves you toward the other with love?
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| Learning from the Mystics: Julian of Norwich |
| Quote of the Week: “Our beloved God wants us to gently accuse ourselves, clearly perceiving and genuinely recognizing our faults and the harm that comes from them, setting our intention to repair the damage and not repeat it, while at the same time acknowledging the everlasting love he has for us and taking refuge in his boundless mercy. This is all he asks of us, and he himself helps us to do it.” – Chapter 52, p145 Reflection: Humility, which comes from the Latin root humus for earth, means to be grounded. Humility, humor, and humanity are all related to each other etymologically. To be a faith-oriented person demands that one be grounded in their humanity by integrating humility and humor toward oneself. Julian advises us here that we should, in fact, “gently accuse ourselves” long before anyone might harshly accuse us. To watch one’s life and choices is a main concern for each of us. We all have the ability to deny, repress, justify, judge, joke, and use any number of other defense mechanisms to avoid confronting our own issues. To sin is not as serious of a problem as to sin and not “repent well.” The mark of a faithful person is not that they live rightly at every moment, but that they respond rightly to when they do wrong. Again, Julian’s advice is that we “gently accuse ourselves.” However, Julian is like most prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. Judgment is understood as “assessment” and that “assessment” exists to turn one’s life around and restore it. The prophets do not end on a note of damnation, they end on a note of hope. To “gently accuse oneself” is not to berate oneself, as if the quality of faith is correlated to how poorly one thinks of oneself. To have such a mindset is counter to the understanding of humility that Julian receives in her visions of Jesus. Julian would advise each of us to: Gently accuse ourselves,look honestly at our lives,recognize our faults,recognize the harm caused,choose to repair the harm we have caused,choose to not repeat those same faults,and remember that we are endlessly loved. Prayer Lord, grant us the courage and the wisdom to look honestly at our own lives. Help us to learn from our mistakes more than repeat them. Help us to recognize and repair the harm we have each caused to others, and help each of us to “gently accuse ourselves” only to fall back into the hands of Divine Love each time. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |
| Life Overview: Who Were They: Julian, also known as Juliana Where: Norwich, England When: 1343-1416AD (During the Bubonic Plague) Why She is Important: She is the first published female in the English language and is known for her incredibly hopeful, intimate, and tender theology of God. What Was Their Main Contribution: The Showings (or Revelations) of Divine Love |
