February 1999 (Vol. XII, No. 2)
May BLESSINGS OF PEACE AND LOVE be with you! As our minds and spirits vie for our attention each day, let us remember to spend time in the Silence recalling to mind our belovedness. Thus, our spirits may be at peace and grow in love, and thus, do we reawaken to the Divine Guest within our hearts.
To really love is a great discipline, because we must love stably and consistently and regardless of whether or not our love is returned. In other words, we love despite our likes and dislikes, despite our selves or egos. We simply ALLOW love to be a transformative force in our lives. ALLOWING is the key. And this is not a passive but an active discipline... Genuine love asks for nothing in return, through it always works toward duplicating itself in others. Thus, the greatest reward for one who practices the discipline of love is that another being has been illumined by that love and is now carrying that gift to others.
Whenever our heart opens to another person, we experience a moment of unconditional love. People commonly imagine that unconditional love is a high or distant ideal, one that is difficult, if not impossible, to realize. Yet though it may be hard to put into everyday practice, its nature is quite simple and ordinary: opening and responding to another person's being without reservation.
Love is not a doctrine. Peace is not an international agreement. Love and peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.
We live in a wounded and wounding culture. But each of our hearts, though torn, is greater than its chambers. The roots of love and reverence are deep within Creation which gives us the capacities to change human consciousness, hear the heart, and deepen the soul.
Lovers always have the sense of something given. They cannot find in themselves an adequate explanation for all that they feel and understand. In the intimate giving and receiving of their love, they not only reveal and discover their own truest selves, but come face to face with the mystery of God. The very acceptance and enjoyment of the gift they have received brings them into the presence of the Giver.
As Dom Helder started to speak about the poor, he choked up and could not continue. The bags under his eyes filled up like fountains and the tears ran down his wrinkled face. For five minutes he could not speak. His mouth twitched every now and then, and we hoped he might be able to continue. We waited in rapt attention for him to express what he was trying to say, but he could not. The memory of the destitute and the realization of their desperate plight left him with just one response: tears.
What is the greatest kind of love?
Great Love
does not flow with just tears.
Rather, it burns in the great Fire of Heaven.
In this Fire
it flows and flows swiftly
yet all the while
it remains in itself
in a very great stillness.
The choice to love is
the Mother of everything.
There is a path
Which leads to a gate
That needs a key.
The path is understanding
The gate is Love
The key is in your hand.
Living beings, upon attaining a threshold level of self-awareness, begin to yearn to reunite with their Source. The weird thing is that these living beings initially seem unaware they are literally made up of the substance of the Source. Thus, they do not seem to understand it is as impossible to fear God as it is to fear oneself. Yet the evolution of living sentient beings is eventually defined in terms of the beings' ability to discover this relationship between the original God Source and their own selves. Once this happens, the dominant theme of existence is love. One can love oneself, and all others, because one sees that all of everything is created from the same fabric ... Love is the theme of God, the glue that keeps the universe together.
Silence admits of many degrees ... but the greatest silence is that of our spirit with God's Spirit: Heart speaks to heart in silence, the language of self-surrendering love.
If we don't know in the depths of our being that God calls us "beloved," we need to. And if we do know it, and it hasn't set us on fire, then we don't know it well enough. Take time daily to be alone and silent before God. And an awareness of your utter belovedness will become a reality for you.
There is no reign of love that comes down from above;
God's love must always start in someone's human heart.
Resurrection is to engage at the core of the Heart of existence and the Love that knows no limits. It is to encounter and surrender to That which is forever seeking us, and from this to conceive the Godseed. Resurrection presumes a void that precedes it, an emptying of our existence. Being empty, we then can be filled; being unknowing, we become knowledge; being nowhere we are suddenly a citizen of the great Realm of Love.
LOVE makes every space sacred
and every moment meaningful...