The greatest gift

“Our most painful suffering often comes from those who we expect to love us and those we supposedly love. The relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, teachers and students, pastors and parishioners - these are where our deepest wounds occur. Even late in life, yes, even after those who wounded us have long since died, we might still need help to sort out what really happened in these relationships. The great temptation is to keep blaming those who were closest to us for our present condition saying: ‘You made me who I am now, and I hate who I am.’ The greatest challenge is to acknowledge our hurts and claim our true selves as being more than the result of what other people did for or to us. Only when we can claim our God-made selves as the true source of our being will we be free to forgive those who have wounded us and to feel truly forgiven.”

-- Henri Nouwen Society

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

-- Henri Nouwen, in The Road to Daybreak; A Spiritual Journey

“To love at all is to be totally vulnerable. Truly love anyone, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-- C.S. Lewis

"Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."

-- Henri Nouwen

“When we live at each other's mercy, we had better learn to be merciful. … The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”

-- William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

“The only thing that redeems a gift is the genuine love of the giver.”

-- William Sloane Coffin, Jr.


We are all way too different, and we hurt way too much in way too many ways and for way too many reasons, to ever expect ourselves or each other to “get it right” when it comes to expressing our deepest love. For example, I have discovered in my life experience that the greatest gift ever given to me was a deep and abiding “belief” in me, that I could do it, that I could transcend my own pain and problems with God’s guidance and help, without the interference or intervention of others, to learn to fully be myself and to thrive in that. I have since discovered that what I consider great love and generosity and true blessing from a friend in the form of belief, might be perceived as meaningless by someone who wants me to get involved and solve their problem more actively and/or concretely. And I will not be able to get this right, ever. Actively solving another’s problem is not always the right idea. And believing while doing nothing is not always the right idea. There is no way to always get this right, folks. There will be many missed opportunities, mistakes, oversteps, and under-delivers. All there is, ever, is to be and do what feels right to you in the spirit of love, knowing it will not be enough or will be way too much, and that the spirit of it is more important than the delivery mechanism or quality of performance. Anything, even if the absolute wrong thing, when done in genuine love, is the right thing. And conversely, anything, even if the exact right thing, when done in arrogance or judgment or purely duty or resentment, will be the wrong thing. Loving, and forgiving yourself for your not understanding love enough, and forgiving others for missing your mark, is the key aspect to the human exchange of our greatest gift. “Performing love right” (in your self-righteous assessment) and “expecting it performed right” (in your blind arrogance) in return, is pure folly, producing only mayhem and misunderstanding.

Relating and loving, His way

Creating a Home Together (Henri Nouwen Society)
Many human relationships are like the interlocking fingers of two hands. Our loneliness makes us cling to each other, and this mutual clinging makes us suffer immensely because it does not (because it cannot) take our loneliness away. But the harder we try, the more desperate and upset we become. Many of these "interlocking" relationships fall apart over time, because they become suffocating and oppressive. Human relationships are meant to be like two hands folded together. They can move away from each other while still touching with the fingertips. They can create space between themselves, a little tent, a home, a safe place to be. True relationships among people point to God, live in God. They are like living prayers in the world. Sometimes the hands that pray are fully touching, and sometimes there is distance between them. They always move to and from each other, but they never lose touch. They keep praying thankfully to the One who brought them together in the first place. They honor both the pain and the transcendence into bliss that is only possible through the pain.

Kahlil Gibran on Love
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your deepest desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.


I am asked often about love, mostly from those who suffer in its painful unfolding and maturing, and the answer is always very hard to hear, because it is so damn unreasonable, and yet so annoying clear:

”Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends (and always wins).

-- 1 Corinthians 13:7-8

”Marriage (committed love) is about total nakedness, exposure, defenselessness, and the very extremities of intimacy. It is about simple, unadorned truth between two human beings, truth at all levels and at all costs, and it does not care what pain or inconvenience must be endured in order for the beautiful habit of truth to take root, to be watered, and to grow into full maturity.”

-- Mike Mason


Yes, it is meant to burn and crush you (the “you” that wants and/or needs justice, kindness, manageability, or pleasure) and then to birth YOU (the “YOU” that loves, simply because it must come alive and express itself, no matter what – it is all there is to do, to be)! It is so like the phoenix rising from the ashes of itself, and you get to climb on and take the ride, but only if you are courageous enough to endure the burning.

Outrageous, ridiculous love

Love is totally outrageous in any form. In its purest form, it's downright impossible and totally ridiculous. See the two pieces below for a rich description of what I mean, when it comes to the deepest and purest variety. Whew, it's exhausting just to consider. No wonder we're instructed not to try to do it on our own, but only on His horsepower, which looks something like this - a king on a donkey. Please read the writing below carefully and be humbled by it.



"Love in its purest form is the most powerful weapon we have against hatred, indifference, prejudice, misunderstanding, and divisiveness. The more we genuinely love, the more we understand that this commandment is life-altering for everyone involved. Just as water rushing against hardened stone eventually erodes the stone, so love in action breaks down all barriers between people. It’s a commandment which works miracles and brings the kingdom of God closer to reality.

On the morning of Sunday, November 8, 1987, Gordon Wilson, an Irishman, took his daughter Marie to a parade in the town of Eniskillen, Northern Ireland. As Wilson and his twenty-year old daughter stood beside a brick wall waiting for English soldiers and police to come marching by, a bomb planted by IRA terrorists exploded from behind, and the brick wall tumbled on top of them. The blast instantly killed half a dozen people and pinned Gordon and his daughter beneath several feet of rubble. Gordon’s shoulder and arm were badly injured. Unable to move, Gordon felt someone take hold of his hand. It was his daughter, Marie.

“Is that you, Dad?” she asked. “Yes, Marie,” Gordon answered. He heard several people begin screaming. “Are you all right?” Gordon asked his daughter. “Yes,” she said. But then she, too, began to scream. As he held her hand, again and again he asked if she was all right, and each time she said “Yes, Dad.” Finally Marie said, “Daddy, I love you very much.”

Those were her last words. Four hours later she died in the hospital of severe spinal and brain injuries. Later that evening, a BBC reporter requested permission to interview Gordon Wilson. After Wilson described what had happened, the reporter asked, “How do you feel about the guys who planted that bomb?” “I bear them no ill will,” Wilson replied. “I bear them no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray tonight and every night that God will forgive them.”

In the months that followed, many people asked Wilson, who later became a senator in the Republic of Ireland, how he could say such a thing, how he could forgive such a monstrous act. Wilson explained, “I was hurt. I had just lost my daughter. But I wasn’t angry. Marie’s last words to me – words of love – had put me on a whole new plane of love. I received God’s grace, through the strength of His love for me, to forgive.” For years after this tragedy, Gordon Wilson continued to work for peace in Northern Ireland.

Because forgiving, like loving, requires an act of your will, it’s not possible to genuinely and sincerely love your enemies unless first, like Gordon Wilson, you’re willing to forgive them. Alexander Pope, the 18th century English poet, correctly observed: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” And, of course, Jesus is the very model of forgiveness. His love, after all, enabled him to forgive those who put him on the cross and even to forgive His Father for allowing them to do it.

-- Stephen Sciolino


"Love is as love does. Love is active, not passive. Whenever we choose and then will to act for good on behalf of another, we are involved in the hard work of love.

Through quiet tears, Mary told me about another of her failed relationships. Now in her mid-forties and nearly desperate to find the right partner, she questioned whether it would ever happen. She had always believed there was just one person who was her true soul-mate. Each of her relationships started out well, but at some point each fell flat. There always came that day when she awakened to the feeling she was no longer 'in love.' What was wrong with her? Mary asked.

I told her I had no idea if anything was wrong. But, I did know that even if she ever were to find her true so-called soul-mate, there would inevitably come the day when she would roll over in bed and think to herself, 'What on earth am I doing here?' Then, I added, would come her opportunity to discover what love was more nearly about, because at that moment she would have to choose to love or not, whether or not she felt it.

Though we’re allergic to this truth, love really has a lot to do with choice and the discipline involved in regularly choosing it, time and time again, way beyond what is reasonable. We would rather think of it as something that happens to us because of another's attractive or appropriately loving behavior than as something that is created and maintained by us (albeit through our access to Him). I think this allergy helps explain why there seems to be so little of it in our world and how easy it seems to lose.

Love is as love does. The desire for love and the desire to love is not the same thing as love. The test comes when examining what one actually does, regardless of what one feels or desires.

'My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.' There is no other statement, no other teaching in the Bible that’s any clearer than this. If you were to summarize in a single sentence the primary teaching of Jesus, this is it. And, if someone then questioned what you meant by love, you could respond that it moves along a continuum that ends with this: greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for another.

In the ultimate sense, the very most I can do for another is to hand over my life. That’s the model Jesus presents. Now, on a daily basis, we aren’t usually called upon to give up our physical lives. But, if we are intent upon really loving, then we live with the will to extend ourselves fully for others. The promise that comes with our faith is that the more we give ourselves in love, the more our own lives become transformed by love. And, at the end, even death itself is swallowed up by love.

But be clear, this sort of love has no tangible reality unless it is acted out in the world. When Tertullian, a Christian convert who became a prominent theologian of the second century declared, 'See how the Christians love one another,' he is not referring to expressions of warm desires and feelings between them – as though they frequently exchanged lovely Hallmark cards. He’s referring to how they acted, what they did, what the contents of their lives revealed. They put themselves – their possessions, their commitments, their very lives – on the line. They extended themselves completely to others. They acted in love, for love is as love does.

There is no higher calling for the living out of our days. Alas, it is less easy in the doing than we would like. C. S. Lewis wrote: 'To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one…. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in the casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — your heart will change. It will not be broken; instead it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love…is Hell.'

And so, it is that which we do from time to time: fashion our own custom designed versions of Hell, hoping against hope that love will be easy as you please. To love authentically requires one to be a total risk-taker. To love at all is to be vulnerable-in-action. To act in love often requires defying your own feelings and sense of reason. One cannot love and simultaneously maintain a controlled and steely existence, or an existence in flagrant disregard for others.

The sort of love we read, sing, and speak about in here is manifested best in the life of a man who said, 'Love one another as I have loved you,' who was then summarily betrayed, arrested, and left for dead by the very ones to whom he addressed himself. That’s the prescriptive example of divine love. That was God’s definition.

The miracle is that this sort of love ultimately triumphs in this world. As the First Letter of John says it: 'For the love of God is this…that whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith and acts of great love.'

Love is as love does. There are so many things to be done in this world, ranging from feeding the hungry and giving clean water to the thirsty, to listening to a friend’s turmoil and offering acceptance and compassion and gentleness, to asking forgiveness of a co-worker or friend or neighbor, to spending quality time with children, really listening to them, to giving generously and extravagantly of our material resources and our time, to learning how to build lasting, committed relationships and partnerships and communities, to working for God's justice for all people.

To actively and proactively love is a radical way of living in the world, surely the most radical way there is. To actively and proactively love is a life stance, a way of orienting ourselves in the world. To love authentically stakes a claim on what matters most in this life, and it runs counter to much of what we experience day-to-day. It takes us radically altering our daily priorities. It grows us way more than it pleases us, ... until it pleases us no end.

A daunting, inspiring challenge. A worthy, humbling path. Thank God we have one another with whom to practice. And if it's hard, awesome! Thank God we have the rock-solid, sustaining model in Jesus, and, most importantly, his abiding, indwelling presence upon our humble invitation."

-- Stephen Bauman


As I heard so accurately said once, "Your salvation is free, but following costs you everything!" But here's the really good news: the EVERYTHING you ultimately receive in return is infinitely bigger than the everything you must first give up. Be willing to give up everything for the hope of EVERYTHING, walking completely in faith, as instructed. For His love is big and bold and outrageous, even ridiculous!


And remember, ...

it's not how big and great my efforts are in solving things far and wide;
it's how BIG and GREAT His love is in solving me on the inside.

The applied wisdom and unique talent of Leonard Cohen

I have a friend who reminds me a whole lot of Leonard Cohen - his dark, depression history, his awesome, very rare and very raw poetic and musical genius, his unabashed coolness and unconcerned soulfulness, etc.. As I was describing this, another friend shared an excerpt from an interview correspondence between Leonard Cohen and another friend with me over lunch yesterday, because it so interestingly tied together both my interest in Leonard personally (and, as you can read below, he is getting to be quite a wise sage in his ripe age) and my fascination with what's going on within the world of Christianity these days, and how far that can sometimes seem removed from what Jesus is really about. Here is what he shared.

"Seth: You have such vivid Christian imagery in so many of your songs, and much of it is contrasted with the selfishness of the "modern" individual. I was wondering, what's your take on the state of Christianity today?

Leonard Cohen: Dear Seth, I don't really have a 'take on the state of Christianity.' But when I read your question, this answer came to mind: As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by His Grace alone, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much emotional, mental, and physical activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality."

-- shared message forward from one friend, in honor of another


Here, if you want a real treat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el9NBgv0Nn0&feature=related
OMG, what soul this man has!

And, as he relates to his faith and his experience with human beings as he walks it:

"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a very remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is because it is beyond our imagination. I think it has something to do with the energy of boundless love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise and experience of a strange kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man even attempting to set the universe in order by himself. It is a kind of tortured balance that is his glory. He rides the snow drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world (because he was instructed to do so) that he gives himself completely to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is totally at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of their hearts. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

-- Leonard Cohen, in the intro to the novel, Beautiful Losers (1966)

If ever I aspired to be a saint, this is the kind of saint I would hope to be - not so clean, dull, and "saintly packaged," not conventional at all, but breathtakingly real, a "beautiful loser," a "runaway ski" on the solid bloody landscape, "nailed to his human predicament" like his master, a pure "monster of love," living "a cold and broken Hallelujah."

What an awesome expression, "monster of love!" I understand it so deeply and personally, and I get called it in such a colorful variety of ways. I can't claim to like it, because it burns and tears at me, visciously so at times, but I do, actually, on deeper reflection, because it so accurately reflects my experience on the other side, with him.

This message is in loving honor of my dear friend, K.P. You rock on, brother! I don't care what it looks like. I see you.

And in loving honor of my totally bought-in brothers and crazy cohorts in the crime of radically loving exactly what is.

Love is hard, not loving much harder.

"John says, 'Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.' (1John 4:7) We cannot know God and His love and not love others. It is not possible. There is simply no way we could have been touched by His love and not be affected in the way we see and relate to others. So for someone to claim to know God and to remain hard and hateful and judgmental towards others is impossible. If we know Him, we will love our brothers and sisters (and parents and children and friends). Look at Paul. Before he met the Lord, he hated and was consumed and driven by that hate. The moment he met the Lord, he loved those whom he hated before and instead of persecuting and murdering them, he laid down his life for them. Not loving was much harder on him than loving, to be sure.

But just as our love for God has to be proven in practical ways, so our love for our brothers and sisters cannot be just a theory, feeling, or simply words. It must be demonstrated. John says that we know that God loved us because Jesus laid down His life for us, 'And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.' (John 3:16). What does that mean? It means giving up everything, including your very life in order to actively love your brother. It means going out of your way and making real sacrifices of time, energy, and money to love him. It means dying to what you want so that your brother can feel your love. This is not a slap on the back or a hug or singing, 'It’s love that makes the world go round'. It means giving up your own agenda and opinions to hear him. It means digging deep in your pocket or your schedule if your brother is in need. I hear a lot of talk about love, I don’t see a lot of action in day-to-day life. 'Whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth' (1John 4:17,18). In plain English: don’t talk about love – do it. The opportunities are right in front of you. And where it's hardest is where it's best. (And trust me, just like for Paul, not doing is much harder.)

John says that God proved His love for us by Jesus dying and that we must love one another just as God loved us. (1John 4:11). As if this message is not hard enough already: Not only must we not hate our brother, neither should we merely tolerate him, we must love him and prove our love for him. Even harder, we have to love him 'just as God loved us'. Do you love your brothers and sisters just like God loved you – unconditionally, in spite of our ugliness, and by dying on the cross? So why then are we still doing things that hurt one another? Why are we not meeting with people at every possible opportunity? Why are we still living lives of ease or pain management while others are struggling for their very lives? Why are we still saying uncharitable things and thinking dark thoughts about others? What justification do we cling to to explain our stubborn refusal to do what He did for us and does for us every day, time and time again? And how do we then claim to love Him in the very next breath?

Dear friend, this is serious business. If we truly love God, things have to change in our relationships, starting with the closest ones, which often are the hardest ones, and spreading throughout all of them. We can’t keep deceiving ourselves that we know and love God when we do not really know and love each other. Yes, loving can be really hard work, but the cost of ignorance or oblivion or refusal on this subject is way more painful."

-- Anton Bosch

It's time to stop talking and to put our lives at stake, to start listening and seeing, to open up to receiving Him so that we can pour Him out. Our "attempts" at loving are often laughable. He invites us to stop "trying" and start "allowing." It does not have to be hard work, and it's nothing compared to ignoring this, because He has and is willing to do all the heavy lifting. It's effortless to Him, because it is His nature. We need only get out of the way. Try dropping your entire agenda for one day today. Try giving up any demands or desires or needs to get your way, recognizing that He has truly given you everything (if you're alive and breathing, this is true), and simply be there for others, extend yourself, forgive, invite, open up, share, thank, and see what happens inside your heart.

The incredible journey of "the next loving thing"

My life has been reduced, and I do mean reduced, for God's sake (there is such rich humor in that, by the way), to a moment-to-moment, step-by-step inquiry into and choice of the next loving action. No more big campaigns, dreams, projections, schedules of activities, work plans, etc. - no, simply what would my humanity being overruled by and then my spirit acting as Jesus produce or make possible in this very moment, this next trembling confrontation of my will and total surrender to His. There is not a lot to this, really, but a slowing down and settling into the present, to be in His Presence, trusting completely that the actions that ensue will be driven from, vs. reaching for, Him. This way of living has taken decades for Him to cultivate, and for me to allow, and now here we are!

When he said these words in John 15:10-12, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love one another as I have loved you.", he knew that it would be a 24x7 proposition, and the rest would be HisStory.

So it is written, ... so it shall be done, ... as all that matters.

What is love?

"Jim, will you examine for me (out loud) what love is? There are so many quotes and verses on love, and I would just like to hear from you about what your life has shown you on what love is. No hurry. Thanks so much for your insights."

-- text message question from a friend

So, K.F., "what love is." Hmmm... That really is a BIG question. I cannot possibly get it right, but you didn't ask me to; you asked me to examine it out loud. Here are my brief but very deep musings on the subject, from experiences of my life, especially over the last year, as I've been dropping deeper and deeper into this beautiful, yet daunting inquiry:

I have discovered love to be the natural expression of and response to knowing who and Whose we are, because in so deeply knowing this, we are clearly accepted exactly as we are, in all of our aspects and states, adored way beyond our mental comprehension, treated as precious in ways that totally defy description, but that keep us so exuberantly and so warmly wrapped in Mystery by His Majesty. Exploded by and then totally sourced by this overwhelming love, there is no effort in or performance involved in the loving of another - it simply flows through and pours out of us. With this clarity, we get to naturally overflow into a rich experience of "being" this love. When we're totally aware of our connection to God, the object of our love feels that awareness and is instantly appreciative; when we're not and we lose our connection, the other wonders where we've gone. It's our connection to Truth that's gone, not us. This connected place is a place that needs no words; it is a "state of being" that feeds and nourishes its entire surroundings without even really trying.

From August of this year, having written on the subject often throughout 2009:

"Many have asked me about the nature of the love they feel they receive from me when my connection to God is clear. They want to more deeply know it, and they'd like to more fully receive it, even while sometimes trying to possess it more exclusively for themselves, but they can't because it isn't mine or theirs to possess. I simply follow my Master, receiving Him completely and then giving what He's given me so generously - expanding, healing, and transcending my fear-based self as His love flows through me. What do I mean by this? Simple. As human beings, we try to love, so as to receive love, but therein lies the problem - we try and fail and resent the person we're trying to love for our own failure and their refusal to give back, when the only problem is that we are drawing from (and trying to receive from) the wrong (and severely limited) source. It is very clear when this is happening - you can usually hear the competition for oxygen in the room. There is only One Source of true and reliable love, and we all have equal access to it and equal opportunity to be a human conduit through which it can flow. We often forget, and then we can remember. It isn't about us and our loving ability at all; it is about our choice of remembering."

-- Yours Truly

And from March of this year, via another point of view - one that I happen to respect and share deeply:

"What, then, is love? Because it must be experienced in order to be meaningful, I can't define it for you except to say that it is the total absence of fear in the recognition of complete union with all of life. We truly love another when we see that our interests are not different or separate from theirs. This is always a union of higher minds and hearts based on loving intentions and never a forced or coincidental alliance of egos based on physical attraction or emotional neediness.

It isn't possible to evaluate or prove the existence of love in the usual ways. However, the fact that we are not able to 'measure' it does not make it less real. We have all had glimpses of pure, unconditional love, and there is unquestionably a part of us that knows it exists. We become aware of love whenever we choose to accept people without judging them and commence the gentle, peaceful effort of giving without any thought of getting something we think we need in return. This means, for example, that true love is not giving in order to change another's attitude from one of cold harshness to one of gentle lightheartedness or from ingratitude to one of total thanks to us. True love is a completely pure and unencumbered form of giving. It is extended freely to the love in others and is its own reward.

The word 'love,' as we generally and very loosely use it in our society, means something quite different from 'real love' as I am describing it here. The more common thing we experience is very 'conditional' love -- in other words, giving in order to get something back. It is a bargain - a trade agreement or carefully (and very suspiciously) negotiated arrangement. This is often fairly obvious in romantic relationships in which each partner is giving with the expectation that it will be returned in the very specific form that is desired. Conditional love is also what passes for kindness in most parent/child relationships. Here, the extension of love is contingent upon approved behavior and attitudes. Parents frequently seek an affirmation of their own worth through the accomplishments and behaviors of their child and through 'payments' of their full compliance and visible respect. Children often love their parents only when they get what they think they want, whether this be a new possession or approval and praise. Such love is neither dependable nor permanent, and its temporary nature causes us to carry the underlying fear that we are about to be abandoned into our adult lives.

When we are giving true love, our concern is not with our own or anyone else's 'behaviors' or with reciprocity of attempted goodness. We feel natural and unrestricted because we recognize that love is our naturally flowing state. We are not aware of any lack or limitations. We don't question the possibility of devotion, and we are not preoccupied with time. We are only conscious of now and all of the opportunity and richness that it contains. When we are extending love, we are free and at peace.

We all say that we want to have less conflict, fear, stress, and depression in our lives. And deep within our hearts we do really want this to be so. But on the level from which we function most of the time, we rarely can choose peace over conflict and happiness over fear because of the sacrifices we believe these choices must entail. We also believe that there is satisfaction in revenge, that we can be right (and good, and happy) by proving someone else wrong (and bad, and miserable), that to humble someone who is being difficult will give us 'a little peace and quiet' (and maybe even a little sweet retribution). We've truly lost our minds (and become totally out of touch with our hearts) when it seems logical to us to be stern with our children in order to teach them gentleness, when we think that there are people who deserve to lose because of their bad behavior and that the pain they receive is just and appropriate, when we try to increase love with one person by callously excluding another or others, when we mistake guilt and obligation for attraction, when we believe that pain can be pleasurable and that taking is getting. Then we are stunned and puzzled and very frustrated as to why this approach to life does not bring us good health and peace, and yet we see no reason to change our basic beliefs.

It is obvious that we need an experience which will bring clarity to our minds. The experience we all need more of is real love. In order to move more deeply into an atmosphere of genuine love, we must identify less with the 'body' and more with our love-related 'emotions' and 'spirit.' These are the set of feelings and awareness that speak to us of what has always been within us, but what our shabby ego/intellectual self-image has not allowed us to fully see. To recognize it we have to bring it forth boldly, for only by boldly extending what is good in us can we know and believe in the good within us, and that we ourselves are truly good. However, to 'bring it out' does not always mean to 'act it out,' but rather to bring it actively into our hearts and minds as belief and then to choose actions and attitudes consistent with it.

A preoccupation with the body and its pre-wired attitudes, behaviors, feelings, needy thoughts, and obsession with their short-term gratification does not allow real love to flood our mood, because the body is merely what is different and separate, needing something that is often 'at the expense of' another. In order to love, we must recognize what is the same within us, that which reunites us with a flood of shared emotion."

-- Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., in Teach Only Love


We started a new Love Machine yesterday at Taft, and I felt this flood of shared emotion among its participants, this stunning sameness in the recognition of the human condition, this bold reuniting around the commitment to remembering who and Whose we are under all circumstances. It was a reminder of what real love feels like, buried in the avalanche of human pain and suffering. It fuels me for today, to remember who and Whose I am, and to allow for that awareness to flow naturally, rather than try to manage or succeed at it with my family. I can be a real pain in the ass when I try to get some attention for me and my feeble humanity, especially when my "need" for it seems to be spiking, when I'm feeling sorry for myself, or when Im trying to manipulate others so that these needs get met or at least not trampled on. It never goes well when it's about me or when my effort comes from me. I have a very honest wife and children as my mirrors. They spot my feeble trying and my selfish nonsense in an instant. So I get to practice again, and today's a new day, and it's not about my renewed efforts toward them, but about the remembering, receiving, and allowing from Him.

Circle of Love

Talk about things coming full circle - in this case, a circle of love:

Contributed by Jerry Rosenbaum, from his daily blog:

contributed by Jim Spivey:

As you read the next book, chapter, or Bible verse, take the next mission trip, retreat, or seminar, meet with the next guru, spiritual guide, master teacher, or therapist, set up the next small group or other community experience, have your next quiet time or scream session, please be and remain aware that, in the end, it all comes down to your seeing God's Truth (however that is actually "experienced" as your truth) inside yourself, choosing it for yourself, and boldly living it out in your toughest confrontations and situations, regardless of the fear and anxiety involved.

This strikes me as the equivalent of your definition of faith, Jerry - knowledge, desire, and volition (aligned action). Very cool!

Yes, I love Jerry so much, even though I've never met him in person, and he loves me, and it's so awesome how that has come to be. And, amazingly, we share the same birthday, July 12. Thank you, my birthday buddy!

And this is one I got from him a while back, one that complements and embellishes the above beautifully:

contributed by Jerry Rosenbaum:

"As we gain new humility (which is the genuine God-given, vs. artificial and self-made, sense of value and worth) and ever greater freedom from our habitual character defects and repeated poor choices (that are part of our defenses against or escape from our feelings of total worthlessness), God's power flows more surely and freely through us, bringing compassion and healing to others as well as to ourselves, and drawing to us all the things we once fought so hard to attain on the outside (or at least look like we did): self-esteem, feelings of usefulness, joy, strength to surmount difficulties, fellowship, and love. Our simple prayers, humbly spoken, are answered in wonderful ways as we open ourselves and our daily lives up to God's transforming power, and we ultimately find that only God can do for us what we could never do for ourselves."

-- From Step 7 in OA 12 & 12 (and thanks, Jerry)


These messages were inspired by my many beautiful conversations yesterday. If you saw or talked with me, you were part of this. Chances are you are part of this, regardless.

Love in abundance - the real thing vs. the imposter

Many have asked me about the nature of the love they feel they receive from me. They want to more deeply know it and they'd like to more fully receive it, even while sometimes trying to possess it more exclusively for themselves, but they can't because it isn't mine or theirs to possess. I simply follow my Master, receiving Him completely and then giving what He's given me so generously, expanding, healing, and transcending my fear-based self as His love flows through me. What do I mean by this? Simple. As human beings, we try to love, so as to receive love, but therein lies the problem - we try and fail and resent the person we're trying to love for our own failure and their refusal to give back, when the only problem is that we are drawing from (and trying to receive from) the wrong (and severely limited) source. There is only One Source of true and reliable love. I found something that expands my ability to understand and communicate this, after first finding an old familiar quote that has always moved me (which I have annoted based on this expanded understanding). I hope both prove useful and helpful and shed brighter light on the most beautiful topic there is.

"I have found the paradox, that if you love (with your love) until it hurts, and then love even more (beyond your capacity), there will be no more hurt (as He heals you), only more love (because this will now be His - the real thing)."

-- Mother Teresa

"Dear sisters and brothers, I wish to share with you my humble philosophy, which is based on love, but not just any love. We know that there are two types of love: human love and Love Divine. In human love, what we actually try to do is to possess the many without caring for the One, the true Source. But if we do not possess the Source, then the many cannot be of any help to us or us to them. If there is no root, then how will the tree grow? How will we be able to claim the branches or the flowers and leaves as our very own? With the Divine Love, we go first to the One, the Source, and from there we go to the many. We become one with the root, and then we grow into the tree, which will manifest itself through the branches and leaves, the flowers and fruits. Divine Love is the song of multiplicity in unity.

In human love there is demand or, at least, expectation. Very often we start with demand, and when a higher wisdom dawns we no longer demand, but still we expect something from others. We convince ourselves that this expectation is justified. Since we have done something for others - offered our love - we feel it is quite legitimate to expect something in return.

But in Divine Love there is no such thing as demand or expectation. In Divine Love we just give what we have and what we are. What we have and what we are is dedicated service. In the human life, before we give our love, we try to discover love in others - that is, their love for us. In the Divine Life, before we give our love to others, we try to discover Love in its reality and integrality within ourselves. Only then are we in a position to offer love to others. At first our satisfaction dawns when we feel that those to whom we offer our love accept it wholeheartedly. But there is an even higher form of Divine Love when we go beyond this feeling, and give love just for the sake of giving. We give, and even if our love is not accepted, we do not mind. We shall go on giving, for we are all love, because our Source is all Love.

In human love there is not only demand and expectation, but there is something even worse: withdrawal. First we demand, then we expect. When our expectation is not fulfilled, we sometimes try to withdraw from the person to whom we have offered our love. In Divine Love, it is never like that. With Divine Love we try to become one with the weakness, imperfection, and bondage of others. Although we have inner freedom, we use this inner freedom not to lord it over others, but to become one with them, consciously one with their imperfections. In this way we can understand them and serve them at their own level, with a view to transforming their imperfections as our Source transforms ours. It is actually Love (vs. ourselves) that is doing the transformation work in both places.

The capacity of human love is so limited that we cannot expand ourselves (due to a scarcity mentality) and so we totally embrace (in an unconscious attempt to consume) another. There is bound to be a feeling of supremacy while doing this. I shall love you, no doubt, but I wish to remain an inch higher than you, with you 'needing' my love. On that condition I shall love you. The superior loves the inferior because he is satisfied to some extent with his position in this relationship. The inferior very often loves the superior because of his insecurity. So love binds them at the place of their limitation and gives them both some sense of satisfaction. But in Divine Love there is no such thing as superiority and inferiority. Divine Love always gives itself freely and wholeheartedly. Divine Love gets satisfaction only by offering itself totally and unconditionally. In Dvine Love, we come to notice that the personal and the impersonal perfectly go together. There is a balance between the two. The personal in us enters into the vast, which is impersonal; and the impersonal in us enters into the personal to manifest its unmanifested Reality, Divinity, and Immortality. In human love, the personal and the impersonal are two strangers; worse, they are at daggers drawn. The personal and the impersonal at best try to reach a compromise, but this compromise brings no satisfaction at all; in the very depth of human love, there is always a rivalry and competition between the two, and therefore no hope. On rare occasions, the personal says to the impersonal, which is inside the human being, 'Let us alternate our reality, our height, our wisdom, our capacity. This moment you stand up and I shall remain seated; the next moment I shall stand up and you will sit.'

In human love, very often the physical mind, the doubting mind, the suspecting mind, comes to the fore. But in Divine Love, we see only the loving heart, the surrendering heart, the all-beckoning heart. The mind loves a reality because it sees the reality according to its own understanding and vision of itself. But the heart loves a reality because it sees the reality in the reality's own form. The heart becomes inseparably one with the reality, with the very existence of that reality as it is, both inner and outer. It sees the living breath of the reality in its own form and shape; it sees the body and soul of the reality all together.

In human love, the lover and the beloved are two separate persons. The lover is running toward the beloved, and when he reaches the beloved he finds his satisfaction, if only temporarily, in a fleeting fantasy way. In Divine Love, the lover and the beloved are one and inseparable. In Divine Love, the Lover is the Supreme and the Beloved is the Supreme. In human love, we feel that satisfaction lies somewhere else - not within us, but in somebody else. But in Divine Love, satisfaction is found nowhere else but in ourselves. The Lover and the Beloved are one and the same - the Supreme dwelling within, the Supreme flowing to us, and the Supreme outside us waiting to receive itself. When we speak of our 'self' as the Divine Lover or Beloved, we have to know that this is the 'Self' which is both the One and the many. This Self, the Supreme, finds its satisfaction only when it gets a glimpse of God's Reality, Infinity, Eternity, and Immortality in the many. This 'Self' is the One, and it wants to see and feel its Reality in the many.

Love is duty. In our human life we see duty as something mechanical, lifeless, forced - something thrust upon us from the outside. But in the Divine Life, duty is something full of opportunity and power. At every second an opportunity dawning for us to expand our life's consciousness, our life's reality, our life's healing, our life's delight. So, in the divine Life we welcome duty, for it increases our capacity and potentiality and expands the dream of our divine, unhorizoned Reality.

Life is the lesson of Love. Love is the lesson of Life. When we study Life's lesson in our human life, the lesson is composed of fear, doubt, anxiety, worry, and frustration. But in the Divine Life, we see that Love is the lesson not only of Life, but also for Life - for the Life that is everlasting, ever-illumining, and ever-fulfilling.

A Divine Lover is he who believes in the divine miracle. A human miracle is something that feeds our curiosity, something that lasts for a fleeting second. But the divine miracle is the elevation of consciousness. To raise somebody else's consciousness, to raise humanity's consciousness even an iota is the true divine miracle. The conscious help the divine Lover gives to the seeker performs this divine miracle.

We are of God the eternal Love and we are for God the eternal Love. We are of God the infinite Love and we are for God the infinite Love. Eternity is the Source of the Silence life; and Infinity is the message of the sound life. From the One we came and for the many we exist. This is the real message of Divine Love. We are of the One and we are for the many -the many in the One. This is the quintessence of Love Divine."

-- Sri Chinmoy

Living as the Beloved - lunacy made perfect

For those who don't know me, this is not ongoing ramblings about perfect love emerging naturally out of a perfect life - no, this is about a life and a love and a man's heart all rising from the ashes of human calamity, callousness, carnage, chaos, confusion, corruption, and cowardice - mostly my own. This is about a life and a capacity to love that has been fully redeemed, rejuvenated, restored, and resurrected, based on an awareness of my chosenness that can only come on one's knees, paying full attention.

I found myself there long ago, in the wreckage of my folly, and now have chosen to simply stay there, which makes me look like a real lunatic at times, but which - for me, at least - is a lunacy made perfect by the One who adores me.

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"AS THOSE WHO ARE CHOSEN, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved. But what of the other side of it all? What of our desire to build a career, our hope for success and fame, and our dream of making a name for ourselves? Is that to be despised? Are these aspirations in opposition to the spiritual life?

Some people might answer 'Yes' to that question and counsel you to leave the fast pace of the big city and look for a mileau where you can pursue the spiritual life without restraints. But I don't think that that's your way. I don't believe that your place is in a monastery or a community such as L'Arche or the solitude of the countryside. I would say, even, that the city with its challenges is not such a bad place for you and your friends. There is stimulation, excitement, movement, and a lot to see, hear, taste, and enjoy. The world is evil only when you become its slave. The world has a lot to offer - just as Egypt did for the children of Jacob - as long as you don 't feel bound to obedience to it. The great struggle facing you is not to leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise and reject money, prestige, or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who clearly doesn't belong to it.

I believe deeply that all the good things our world has to offer are yours to enjoy. But you can enjoy them truly only when you can acknowledge them as affirmations of the truth that you are the Beloved of God. That truth will set you free to receive the beauty of nature (God, did it ever in NH!) and culture in gratitude, as a sign of your Belovedness. That truth will allow you to receive the gifts you receive from your society and celebrate life. But that truth will also allow you to let go of what distracts you, confuses you, and puts in jeopardy the life of the Spirit within you.

Think of yourself as having been sent into the world ... a way of seeing yourself that is possible if you truly believed that you were loved before the world began ... a perception of yourself that calls for a true leap of faith! As long as you live in the world, yielding to its enormous pressures to prove to yourself and to others that you are somebody and knowing from the beginning that you will lose in the end, your life can be scarcely more than a long, painful struggle for survival. If, however, you really want to live in the world, you cannot look to the world itself as the source of that life. The world and its manipulative strategies may help you to survive for a surprisingly long time, but they cannot help you live because the world is not the source, eve of its own life, let alone youirs.

Spiritually, you do not belong to the world. And this is precisely why you are sent into the world. Your family and your friends, your colleagues and your competitors, and all the people you may meet on your journey through life are all searching for more than survival. Your presence among them as 'the one who is sent' will allow them to catch a glimpse of the real life. Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world. Times and spaces, people and events, art and literature, history and science, they all cease to be opaque and become transparent, pointing far beyond themselves to the place from where you come and to where you will return. It is very hard for me to explain to you this radical change, because it is a change that cannot be described in ordinary terms; nor can it be taught or practiced as a new discipline of self-knowledge. The change of which I speak is the change from living life as a painful test to prove that you deserve to be loved, to living it as an unceasing 'Yes' to the truth of that Belovedness. Put simply, life is a God-given opportunity to become who we are, to affirm our own true spiritual nature, claim our truth, appropriate and integrate the reality of our being, but, most of all, to say 'Yes' to the One who calls us the Beloved.

Once you are able to catch a glipmse of this spiritual vision, you can see how the many distinctions that are so central in our daily living lose their meaning. When joy and pain are both opportunities to say 'Yes' to our divine childhood, then they are more alike than they are different. When the experience of being awarded a prize and the experience of being found severely lacking in excellence both offer us a chance to claim our true identity as the Beloved of God, these experiences are more similar than they are different. When feeling lonely and feeling totally connected and at home both hold a call to discover more fully who the God is Whose children we are, those feelings are more united than they are distinct. When, finally, both living and dying bring us closer to the full realization of our spiritual selfhood, they are not the great opposites the world would have us believe; they are, instead, two sides of the same mystery of God's love. Living the spiritual life means living life as one unified reality. The forces of darkness are the forces that split, divide, and set in opposition. The forces of light unite everything. What the demon divides, Spirit unites. The spiritual life counteracts the countless complaints and divisions that pervade our daily life and cause destruction and violence, and it all starts within ourselves, in the way we are thinking and being about any given situation.

There is no clearer way to discern the true presence of God's Spirit than to identify those moments of unification, healing, restoration, and reconciliation, where it previously didn't seem possible. If they are not present, the Spirit is not being invited into your heart. Wherever the Spirit is invited and at work, divisions vanish and inner as well as outer unity prevails."

-- Henri Nouwen, in Life of the Beloved

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And then another Henri love note dropped in my In Box, as they do every Nouwen then, and it fit perfectly, so here it is.

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Choosing Love When It's Hardest

How can someone ever trust in the existence of an unconditional divine love when most, if not all, of what he or she has experienced is the opposite of love - fear, hatred, violence, and abuse?

They are not condemned to be victims! There remains within them, hidden as it may seem, the invitation and possibility to choose love. Many people who have suffered the most horrendous rejections and been subject to the most cruel torture are able to choose love. By choosing love they become witnesses not only to enormous human resiliency but also to the divine love that transcends all human loves. Those who choose, even on a small scale, to love in the midst of hatred, fear, or just total disregard are the people who offer true hope to our world. Seek them out and learn what they know. It is not that complicated, really. They have discovered that their only healing and hope lies in His arms, and that it is not only "good enough," it turns even the most cruel of circumstances into the most surprising of blessings, that you are then invited and naturally want to share.

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If you would like just one stunning example of the above, find this book, and be prepared to weep for hours:

To love ...

9-10Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

11-13Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help those who are needy; be inventive in hospitality.

14-16Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

20-21Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

-- Romans 12:9-21 (The Message)

"To love means loving all - especially the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning everything - especially the unpardonable. Faith means believing the totally unbelievable. Hope means hoping when absolutely everything seems hopeless."

-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

-- Matthew 5:44

"We 'fall in love,' but we do not 'fall' in agape. We actually 'rise' in agape, which is the proactive choice to love vs. the passive feeling which happens to us."

-- Peter Kreeft

"Love's object is always the concrete individual right in front of you, not some broad abstraction called humanity."

-- Peter Kreeft

"Sometimes loneliness
manifests itself as coldness,
heartache as bitterness,
frustration as meanness.

"Why is it we seem to act the most
unlovable when we need
to be loved the most?

"Help me, Lord, to see
past coldness
past bitterness
past meanness
and into the hearts of those
who need to be loved the most,
and to lay myself down there,
as you laid yourself down for me!"

-- Alice Joyce Davidson

Notice that the emphasis is on loving, as a proactive action verb, and not on being or feeling loved by other people. This is an interesting twist - "knowing" that God adores me, and that people do the very best they can, but I don't really need them to "get it right," because I only need to receive the perfection of Him "getting me right," and to get that clearly and fully, so that giving to others is effortless and natural, not contingent upon another's ability to receive it or reciprocate.

"A poet has written, 'The desire to feel loved in the world is the last illusion: let go of that and you are home free.'"

-- Brennan Manning, in The Ragamuffin Gospel

To love you must be bold and willing to unlock the mystery that is you.

Teach (and live) only love

From my birthday two years ago, in honor of those trying desperately to navigate what feels like the "whitewater madness" of loving relationship:

"What, then, is love? Because it must be experienced in order to be meaningful, I can't define it for you except to say that it is the total absence of fear in the recognition of complete union with all of life. We truly love another when we see that our interests are not different or separate from theirs. This is always a union of higher minds and hearts based on loving intentions and never a forced or coincidental alliance of egos based on physical attraction or emotional neediness.

It isn't possible to evaluate or prove the existence of love in the usual ways. However, the fact that we are not able to 'measure' it does not make it less real. We have all had glimpses of pure, unconditional love, and there is unquestionably a part of us that knows it exists. We become aware of love whenever we choose to accept people without judging them and commence the gentle, peaceful effort of giving without any thought of getting something we think we need in return. This means, for example, that true love is not giving in order to change another's attitude from one of cold harshness to one of gentle lightheartedness or from ingratitude to one of total thanks to us. True love is a completely pure and unencumbered form of giving. It is extended freely to the love in others and is its own reward.

The word 'love,' as we generally and very loosely use it in our society, means something quite different from 'real love' as I am describing it here. The more common thing we experience is very 'conditional' love -- in other words, giving in order to get something back. It is a bargain - a trade agreement or carefully (and very suspiciously) negotiated arrangement. This is often fairly obvious in romantic relationships in which each partner is giving with the expectation that it will be returned in the very specific form that is desired. Conditional love is also what passes for kindness in most parent/child relationships. Here, the extension of love is contingent upon approved behavior and attitudes. Parents frequently seek an affirmation of their own worth through the accomplishments and behaviors of their child and through 'payments' of their full compliance and visible respect. Children often love their parents only when they get what they think they want, whether this be a new possession or approval and praise. Such love is neither dependable nor permanent, and its temporary nature causes us to carry the underlying fear that we are about to be abandoned into our adult lives.

When we are giving true love, our concern is not with our own or anyone else's 'behaviors' or even reciprocity. We feel natural and unrestricted because we recognize that love is our naturally flowing state. We are not aware of any lack or limitations. We don't question the possibility of devotion, and we are not preoccupied with time. We are only conscious of now and all of the opportunity and richness that it contains. When we are extending love, we are free and at peace.

We all say that we want to have less conflict, fear, stress, and depression in our lives. And deep within our hearts we do really want this to be so. But on the level from which we function most of the time, we rarely can choose peace over conflict and happiness over fear because of the sacrifices we believe these choices must entail. We also believe that there is satisfaction in revenge, that we can be right (and good, and happy) by proving someone else wrong (and bad), that to humble someone who is being difficult will give us 'a little peace and quiet' (and maybe even a little sweet retribution). We've truly lost our minds (and become totally out of touch with our hearts) when it seems logical to us to be stern with our children in order to teach them gentleness, when we think that there are people who deserve to lose because of their bad behavior and that the pain they receive is just and appropriate, when we try to increase love with one person by callously excluding another or others, when we mistake guilt and obligation for attraction, when we believe that pain can be pleasurable and that taking is getting. Then we are stunned and puzzled and very frustrated as to why this approach to life does not bring us good health and peace, and yet we see no reason to change our basic beliefs.

It is obvious that we need an experience which will bring clarity to our minds. The experience we all need more of is real love. In order to move more deeply into an atmosphere of genuine love, we must identify less with the 'body' and more with our love-related 'emotions' and 'spirit.' These are the set of feelings and awareness that speak to us of what has always been within us, but what our shabby ego/intellectual self-image has not allowed us to fully see. To recognize it we have to bring it forth boldly, for only by boldly extending what is good in us can we know and believe in the good within us, and that we ourselves are truly good. However, to 'bring it out' does not always mean to 'act it out,' but rather to bring it actively into our hearts and minds as belief and then to choose actions and attitudes consistent with it.

A preoccupation with the body and its pre-wired attitudes, behaviors, feelings, needy thoughts, and obsession with their short-term gratification does not allow real love to flood our mood, because the body is merely what is different and separate, needing something that is often 'at the expense of' another. In order to love, we must recognize what is the same within us, that which reunites us with a flood of shared emotion."

-- Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., in Teach Only Love

And further moving out of our individual, needy, physically separate bodies into the community-based, richly fulfilled, spiritually united "One Body" that we truly belong to:

"In our faithful, devoted, and committed lives together, we are both 'equal to' and 'One with' each other, and all there is to do is to 'celebrate' and 'suffer with' (i.e.; love) one another."

-- Brother Leroy, visiting preacher at church last Sunday

So many of us, when simply "being" ourselves, enter into relationship with another in such an unobstructed high - aware of how cool, fun, playful, tender, and wonderful we are, as well as how cool, fun, playful, tender, and wonderful certain others are, and that awareness naturally attracts itself, and the journey begins. And then we have some great fun, and we are attractive, thoughtful, and winsome without much effort involved, and everything is beautiful about everything.

And then one day a single thought of our inevitable separateness sets in, and old buttons are hit, old fears are triggered, old pain is remembered, and then something happens, and the high life is gone. Instead, need takes its place, the need to control, to feel a certain thing from the other, to manipulate them to receive evidence of that thing, the need to possess that thing we think is in them (and that they are now withholding) solely for ourselves, and we slowly start to strangle that other person we claim to love to death out of our desperate neediness, and we wonder where they went, and where we went, and where love went.

Well, the cold, hard truth was that that was not love at all, at least not the real thing. That was the imposter of romantic obsession and conditional love, just a brief glimpse or hint of the real thing, but not it, for the real thing has no roots in conditions, effort, flirtation, neediness, obligation, persuasiveness, physical attraction or obsession or pornographic imagery, only in real things - naturally flowing abundance, acceptance, benevolence, celebration, connection, hopefulness, joy, true life, the real peace that passes all understanding, and a God-given sense of purpose that is way bigger than ourselves, as well as the genuine, unmasked human pain that binds us all.

If your love or your most important relationship seems to have gone from general feelings of this:

to more and more frequent feelings of this:

it might be time to re-evaluate what you are really involved in, and to ask yourself the very important questions:

1) What am I needing and not getting, and how is that persistent neediness affecting my partner?

2) What am I committed to giving, and is love really the game I'm playing?

And if it is, then know that the only Source of real love (and satisfaction of your real need) is not the physical attraction or chemistry between you two "silly savages," or the other person's wonderfulness that you are striving so hard to unleash and win for yourself (and yourself alone), or even your amazing generosity, kindness, and obvious (to you, at least) worthiness, but Him and His totally mystifying, overflowing, overwhelming, and Perfect Love for you as His precious child.

If you think you're helping or loving, think again.

"Every great life is always, and miraculously so, being helped by everybody;

for his or her greatest gift is to extract good out of all things and all persons."

-- John Ruskin

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, and you can stop.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,
then let us work together to let God do His thing for both of us."

-- Lila Watson

"We can help others in the world more by making the best choices and the most of ourselves than in any other way."

-- Earl Nightingale

"You help people become more motivated by guiding them to the source of their own power, not by showing off your own power."

-- Paul G. Thomas

"You don't truly help a man by doing it for him, or giving it to him, or teaching him anything; you can only truly help him if you encourage him to find it within himself."

-- Galileo Galilei

"God's love doesn't seek value; it creates it. It's not because we have value that we are loved, but because we're loved that we have value. So you don't have to prove yourself -- ever. That's already taken been care of. Simply let your love flow, remembering that help or love that doesn't flow naturally out of knowing how magnificently you are being helped and loved is not help or love at all, but a vain effort to earn it or get it right so you can feel better about yourself. That is not for you to do. How could you possibly feel any better than by simply knowing that your Perfect Father adores His child?"

-- William Sloane Coffin

There are so many people out there trying so desperately to get this "helping thing" or this "loving thing" right. But it's all tied up in performance anxiety and competition, starting within ourselves. In reality, it is not that hard; it is absolutely impossible, ... and therefore easy, once you let go of trying so hard, which is very hard to do when you've been doing it for so long. We can't get this right, folks. We were not made to get it right. We were made to come to know our human selves and limitations (the self we made) sufficiently to ask for help and His loving guidance and then to receive the help and guidance and love with great appreciation and gladness, letting it flow into (to the overflowing) and through us, where our relationships with others basks in that overflow. When we allow it (from who He made) and receive the free gift, we are free to give and receive with reckless abandon, which is pure bliss.

The only reliable love

"When we act out of loneliness or neediness, our actions easily become mean and sometimes downright violent, even as that thought horrifies us. The tragedy is that so much violence comes actually from a frustrated demand for love. When loneliness and desperation drive our search for love, kissing easily leads to biting, caressing to manhandling, looking tenderly to looking suspiciously, listening to overhearing, teasing to tormenting, touching to groping, and surrendering to rape. The human heart yearns for pure love: love without conditions, limitations, or restrictions. But no human being is capable of offering such love by themselves, and each time we demand it from another exclusively we set ourselves on the road to chaos and violence. How then can we live loving, nonviolent lives? We must start by realizing that our restless hearts, yearning for perfect love, can only find that love through communion with the One who created us, and from there everything else can become possible.”

-- Henri Nouwen

"Love isn’t about comfort, ease, and fulfillment of one's desire through another. It’s about giving, unconditionally, which is its own reward. We have been taught and so often believe, underneath our words, that the world should center around us (and all the things that will make us feel bigger and better, more powerful and more complete, more encouraged and supported). But when you truly love someone, the world centers around them - no matter if they behave well or not - no matter if they fulfill some adolescent fantasy or not - no matter if they please you or not - simply because they are them, and because, at the root of it all, it is not even about them."

-- Unknown

"Real love has no complaint, no expectation, no judgment, and no payoff. True love is the sense of total wholeness, completeness, and perfection in the eye of the beholder that just gives and gives and gives, knowing there is nothing more to be, to do, to get, or to have, even (make that especially) when those you love are not necessarily behaving, cooperating, or doing what you would like or expect; they are simply living their lives as human beings being totally, and so often fatally, human."

-- Rev. James E. Thompson

"When you love without conditions, from that place of how totally and unconditionally loved you are by God, you support the freedom of others to choose their own way, even when you disagree with them. You trust them to make the best choice for themselves. You trust God’s plan for their awakening and ongoing care. You know that they can never make a mistake that will cut them off from God’s love or from yours."

-- Paul Ferrini

"Love is not about exclusive possession. Love is simply wanting what is absolutely best for the one you love, and is totally consistent with God's highest intentions for them, even if it does not even include you."

-- Parke Sellard

"Loved people are loving people. We are all loved the same by our Creator. The only difference is in the active, conscious receiving, which then determines the degree and fullness of giving, whether conscious or not."

-- Katherine Hepburn

Love needs no explanation, because it is the explanation to everything, the whole point and purpose of everything. Love need not look for solutions to problems; it is the only real solution. Love never waits on or complains about worldly circumstances; it revels in its own existence, whatever the circumstance, seeing difficult circumstances as the beckoning call for it to really shine. We look for love that is a fiery hot feeling that we receive from another, and for it to be equal and reciprocal, like a carefully negotiated settlement, when True Love (God's Love) creates its own inferno and generates its own heat that totally obliterates all preconceptions of it, leaving no need for negotiation or settlement of anything, and nothing to be deserved or earned. In this time when it seems that love and marriage and real relationship are so under attack, and so many have no idea how to proceed out of the chaos and despair of their bitterness and loneliness, I am reminded of an old Bob Dylan verse that so captures the full impact of the overwhelming TRUTH about genuine LOVE:

"The truth is obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode."

So, what new life is bursting forth within you? And what is its source? If it's you or another person's "strivings for goodness," it is ultimately limited. If it's Him, it is self-sustaining and unlimited, so effortlessly exploding and overflowing. Choose your way carefully, because, in the end, it defines and determines your experience.

Judgment's effect on love

"When we judge a person we claim to love (or ourselves) and make them 'bad' or 'less than' or 'wrong,' we withhold love from them (and show our true colors). Even when we make them 'good' or 'more than' or 'right,' we are withholding love, because we are implying that our love is conditional upon their rightness and worthiness continuing. Any attempt to change someone in any way involves a withdrawal of love, because wanting them to change implies that they (and what's going on with them) are wrong and need to change in some way. Furthermore, we may even do harm in encouraging them to change, for though we may act with the best intentions, we may interfere with their spiritual lesson, mission, and advancement. (God might have His own plan here that we know nothing about - and how common is that?)

For instance, if we send unsolicited comfort or healing energy to someone because they failed at something or are sick, we are in effect making a judgment that they are not OK as they are and should not have failed or be sick. Who are we to make that decision? What do we really know about their lives' journey. Failing or being sick may be the very experience they needed to have for their spiritual growth. Naturally, if they cry out and request a healing or help of some kind, then it becomes a different matter entirely, and you can do all that you can in response to their request (remembering Thursday's message about 'creative tension'). Nevertheless, you still see them as perfect, or at least perfectly where they are meant to be in their journey."

-- Colin Tipping (with some personal additions)

Real love is not contingent upon or even remotely related to another's acceptability, lovability, satisfactory performance, or apparent worthiness. In fact, real love is tested in the fire when the other becomes totally unacceptable, unlovable, unpredictable, even unrecognizable from the person you first thought you loved. Real love is unconcerned about all these other "un's." Real love is simply a "choice" to love, based on the heart's desire to love (because this dramatically grows the lover's capacity to love - truly loving is its own spiritual reward), and it's not based on a "feeling" to love, which is about the lover's physical and/or emotional benefit and/or pleasure. That shallow "feeling thing" is more aptly called conditional approval or chemical infatuation, which is most often followed by shallow self-indulgence (which can sometimes be very harmful to the other person), vs. care-full self-management (which is always about honoring - vs. indulging - both oneself and the other person).

On this Valentine's Day, which is not a particularly important or meaningful day in my book, due to its surfacey trivialization of love, making it gooey and sweet and usually compensatory and often obligatory, as well, take a good close look at your true loving nature, to see where you could use an adjustment of attitude, courage, habit, or heart, and share your findings and commitments with someone you love. It will be a very worthwhile exercise and could redeem an otherwise nonsensical celebration.

Creative tension

"To genuinely love someone, 'in focused action' instead of just in vague feelings - in other words, to offer your sincere assistance to another out of real love - is to sit in the creative tension between possibly letting them down (by not doing or saying enough) and possibly insulting them (by doing or saying too much), not holding either possibility against them or yourself, instead holding both - along with every resulting gesture - under the gentle, loving scrutiny of God as the only measure of your love's efficacy."

-- Yours Truly

This sentence was inspired by Tuesday's Love Machine, which elicted a memory of William Sloane Coffin's words:

"The only thing that redeems a gift is the genuine love of the giver."

Cure for nightmares - the freedom of disarming love

"With disarming love he began to dissolve their brooding nightmare."

-- Father James P. Walker (in a sermon reference to Jesus coming to
his disciples after they thought he had died and it was all over for
them, ... when it was really just beginning.)

“Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water,
and he spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower.
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him,
he said 'all men will be sailors, then, til the sea could finally free them.”

-- from Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne,” as sung by Judy Collins

"The purpose of allowing yourself to be used for God's radical loving
is to RAISE THE DEAD - starting with yourself."

-- Yours Truly

In light of this phenomenon, it pays to get to the awareness and acceptance of your "worst nightmare," your "human drowning," your total "lostness" quickly and regularly, in order to live out the experience of "getting found." The presence of these "drownings" in my life grows, as more and more become more and more aware of the deadness of their "business as usual," their "carrying on just for carrying on's sake," the sickening malaise of their unshakable "status quo." We come more fully alive in the face of, or right on the other side of, our life's "tragedies." It makes me wonder why we've come to be so scared of them. When werecognize "the illusory absence or avoidance of tragedy" as the biggest tragedy of them all (because the world and human life is a tragicomedy) we are free to live authentically, consistently, turning it into the "heaven on earth" experience Jesus came to live, model, and offer us for free. It is time for us to rise up from the deadness of our worldly pursuits and learn what he was walking, teaching, passionately living, and offering- the freedom of disarming, disestablishmentizing, dismantling love.

"Lord, if it's you, tell me to come to you on the water." - Simon Peter

Love waits ... and wins ... every time

The third in the series, and the perfect culmination. Love waits ... and wins ... every time ... and if you don't really see it, it's just a matter of your attention span and the limitations of your perspective, and it couldn't care less about fixing that. That's totally up to you, and when you're ready, and you shift,

E N J O Y!!!!!

The Unstoppable Power of Truth & Love

When love waters and nurtures the seed of truth, walls of separation and rejection are blown down and obliterated, and God is glorified through the beauty and wholeness of our reconciled and redeemed relationships.

Two hundred years ago in Hanover Germany, a stone tomb weighing over a ton and a half was encircled with iron bands to maintain its integrity for ages to come. Moisture seeped into the tomb and the rays of the sun warmed the stone walls and somehow a little poplar seed began to grow through a tiny crack in the surface. Decades later, as the tree rose to the sky, the tomb broke open and the iron bands burst.

That's how the power of love and truth works to heal offended relationships. The tomb surrounded by iron bands represents the closed spirit of a friend or family member. The seed represents the liberating word of truth. The moisture and warmth of the sun represent the unstoppable power of truth and love.

As we begin to accept the truth about ourselves and our shattered relationships, truth and love begin their irreversible work of breaking the walls that separate us. Sometimes the process takes years. Our problem is that we don't have faith in the unstoppable power of truth and love to do its work.

We want instant results and consequently we often take actions that result in more iron bands being placed around the tomb of our closed relationships. Consequently some people never experience the beauty of reconciliation and redemption, and others sadly don't find it until they are on their death beds. And yet some - through their awareness, experience, faith, patience, prayer, understanding, and wisdom - bask in the glory even before it is made fully manifest, because they know the undeniable, irrefutable, unstoppable power of truth and love, and they wait with joyful expectancy, celebrating each sacred step in the process with honor, dignity, and a sense of awe.

-- Pastor Eugene P. Harder, July 12 (my birthday), 1999

This photo entitled: "Joyful Expectancy" (sorry, no photo here)

"Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."

-- Jesus, in Mark 10:15 (The Message)

We so often talk about love in an intelligent, reasonable manner, talk about its importance in the world and how to "do" it right, so that we can "get in" (notice how it is so often about us), but love is neither intelligent nor reasonable, and it can't be "done," and it isn't concerned about itself or its "accomplishments." In fact, real love defies logic and reason and any kind of doing or achieving. It just slowly and methodically "undoes" everything that's "not it." Real love couldn't care less about fairness, importance, justice, likelihood of reciprocation, size of the obstacles and roadblocks, timeliness of results or rewards, its own safety, winning in any way. Real love simply is, and it brings us to our knees, in shock and awe at the mystery and marvelousness of it. Real love leaves us looking up in wonder and amazement, waiting for the next amazing miracle to unfold.

Try this, if you dare (because it will actually reduce you to your proper size): get on your knees in your back yard, take a moment to recognize what a beautiful child you are in His eyes and really feel that child's heart (this could take a moment - to receive how totally loved you are, even with all your blowhardiness, gamesmanship, goings on, and shenanigans), and then feel the smile slowly light up your face as you bask in the sun. Feel the preciousness of this moment's breath and the healing power of this smile. If you can, get someone who really loves you to take a picture ... so you can remember ... that there is so much more going on in every moment than the next frenzied thing that you think is so very important.

On the day before Easter, a challenging stand for those who love someone who has altered the game or removed themselves from it.

I know many out there who have finally awakened to the full depths of their own pain, and who have begun to own their own destructiveness in their lives. And I know many of those in their lives who are "making them pay." And I know how wide and terrible the gap is in between, and the seeming hopelessness of the situation. And on this day that honors the great void between death and resurrection, between agony and transformation, between darkest sin and most beautiful redemption, I offer these poems and writings, to stand in that dark, empty space where God strips us naked in our silent loneliness and desperate questioning, and teaches us what Faith and Love really are.

"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives it ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

-- William Blake

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove..."

-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet #116

"While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the handAnd taught my doubting heart to understandThat which has puzzled all the human race..."

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Heaven and Hell

"God can mend a broken heart,
but He must have all the pieces."

-- Unknown

"Looking for your love is like looking for a diamond in a large pile of broken glass, and you are on top searching for it with your bare hands."

-- Unknown

"To love means not to impose your own powers on your fellow man but to offer him your caring help and support. And if he refuses it, to be proud that he can do it on his own strength."

-- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"When pure sincerity forms within, it is always outwardly realized in other people's hearts. ... In the Way of Heaven, there is no partiality of love, and nothing left to chance; it is always and forever on the side of the good man."

-- Lao Tzu

"There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no chasm that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem... It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you could be the happiest and most powerful being in the world...

-- Emmet Fox

"And, if you want to know what it looks like, I was visiting someone in a hospital recently, and I watched an elderly couple nearby. The man was in a wheelchair, the wife sitting next to him in the visitors' room. For the half-hour that I watched they never exchanged a single word, just held hands and looked at each other, and once or twice the man patted his wife's face. The feeling of love was so thick in that room that I felt I was sharing in their communion, and I was shaken all day by their pain, their love, something sad and also joyful: the fullness of a human relationship."

-- Eda LeShan