spring

God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.

If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.

There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.

There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.

Love is my chosen food, my cup
holding me in its power.
Where I have come from,
Where'er I shall go,
Love is my birthright,
my true estate.

As the different streams
Having sources in different places
All mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Love,
Thy different paths which people take,
Through various tendencies,
Various though they appear
Crooked or straight,
All eventually lead to Thee.

A paradox: To those who really love, the more they give, the more they possess.

What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."

What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."

Love is the motivation behind every yearning.... In all of life, Love is seeking to discover itself. We com einto this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.