We are created in love, from top to bottom. From start to finish. We can try and run from this, but we will find it waiting for us where we look to hide. It becomes our job to learn to rest in this love, in this truest and deepest identity of us. It may feel weird at first, like a foreign land. But learning to let it wash over us, learning to find our strength there, can be for us a new home. In the Ultimate embrace, we're not so different from each other, we are just people in need of love.
I have things I enjoy in life, I've enjoyed playing guitar and writing songs. I like to write on this blog. I like listening to good music. I worry about how much of the different things to do in my life. Should I join a band? Should I aspire to write a book? Should I dedicate 4 hours a day to contemplative prayer. But I go about trying to discern these things with a linear mind, with rationale thinking. And in this way, I'll never come out with a satisfactory answer. I can come up with what I call the best, the most balanced, the most life giving plan only to find it doesn't work, get frustrated with it, and give up on it maybe even in the same day. This is because I am made for communion. What I discover about my life, needs to be done in and through relationship with the transcendent Other, with God. My heart yearns for communion, for union, for meaning, to be held. This embrace, the embrace of love, needs to be my first desire, and then let the other things fall as they will.
It's so hard for us, because of the images of God we were given to say that God's embrace is all we need. If I was given a god who is in heaven looking for ways to judge us, or is pretty angry at us while we must look for ways to appease this anger, than I believe the deepest and most truest part of us will actually reject this notion of God. In this way we can become split. Our minds trying to conform to the rules of this angry god while our hearts yearn for true union. Our minds trying to conform to duty and law, to rules and finding favor in God's sight, while our hearts, bodies and instincts yearn to do something we enjoy, something real. But if we can get past the images of God we were given, past the subtle fear instilled into us, if we can see Him as one with arms wide open, wanting us to enjoy life more than we want to enjoy life, than we can be changed. We cannot be changed by the image of an angry god, or at least not for the better. But if we can see God as one who enjoys us, delights in us, in near to us, cares for our hearts, works to help us stop waging war against ourselves, calling our hearts, bodies, minds and souls into peace and union with each other, we can be changed by that. All of the sudden, this becomes the one call on my life. All else can be let go of. But not in some self-punishing way where we give up what we love out of self-deprivation, on the contrary these things take their proper places and start working for us even more.
But resting in love can take practice. Sometimes it can take slowing down long enough to hear our inner voices, to hear what our soul cries out for, and to meet this cry with compassion, with grace, with love. It's an unlearning of the hurried lifestyles I feel so many of us live. It can even be scary to rest in love. Our fears can rise to the surface, we can do battle with our inner impulses. But the rising and processing of the fears and voices can help them to come to rest. I see this as possibly my main job as a therapist, to listen to the inner world of another and to help them meet it with self compassion and grace. In this way, we can split less. We don't need to hide our inner desires from ourselves anymore, we have created the space inside of us to accept them, to meet them with love. Finally they have found there home, finally they don't have to cry out "Listen to me! I feel so alone!" So we may rest in love for a little while, our senses may awaken, and we say "Wow! What was that?" And we may run from it. Remember, we were taught that God is to be feared. So if we awaken a little more to him, of course we are going to be scared. But this is all part of the process. Over time, the fear can give way to joy, the apprehension to communion.
So in light of all this, I need not worry about how much of each part of my life to do. The questions I raise seem to have less importance when my life is more given over to love, when I'm doing things out of passion and not because I think I should. I must then let passion grow inside of me, I must employ love as my guide, I must trust the process and if I give my life over to love, it will always be better than I planned it. For all I know, I might not wake up tomorrow. But I want to learn to believe that eternity speaks louder than the temporary in this life. That heaven can start to be given here on this earth. That the invitation is to trust, is to live out of a Greater Source, to let the wellspring of life flow in and through us. Then our part to play will be given, and not taken, and in my resting I will find what truly brings me and others life.
Journey with me into a trust in the One who is love.
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