True Love

What we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in the outward reflection of our own acts.  -- Thomas Merton

Our entire inner being is wrought in Love, from which arises all unity, life, and creativity.  To love and serve God should be one's truest daily calling.  And hence, the highest, most noble service is to inspire and point The Way for another to experience or comprehend the surrounding existence of the One True Love and calling.  I do not understand the human penchant for avoiding or, worse, sabotaging this service and solitary goal of one's life. 

Does Love Have What It Takes?

“Without a more profound human understanding derived from exploration of the inner ground of human existence, love will tend to be superficial and deceptive.” - Thomas Merton

Current US politics invite pondering of the question, “What’s happened to love?” When corruption, deceit, concentration camps, and lies are the engines behind governance, how can a topic like love even make it onto the table of discussion? Is love too mushy and soft to face off against violence and autocracy? Or is love the divine power by which a great correction will happen?

Call me Pollyanna, but I continue to hold out hope and belief that God has not yet abandoned Project Earth. Throughout the Bible’s 4,000-year history, societal cataclysms have threatened the sanity and well-being of humans on earth. So present times should not be considered any worse than humans have had to flounder through before. In Romans 8 (during another time period of armed calamity), Apostle Paul makes the audacious claim, “nothing can separate us from God’s love.” In 1 Corinthians 13, Apostle Paul again extols the virtues of Love. These references often get usurped to be syrup laid on in wedding ceremonies, but the honest references are not to romantic love, but rather to an abounding power or force that holds all creation together. Love is the substantive spiritual force that binds together our very existence, including civility, dignity, beauty, and joy-filled honor. Faith in such a love as this is not “superficial” nor “deceptive.” Love is sufficient to command a commitment to pursue the path of love and to do so without violence. Where violence arises, death reigns.

We believe in a God of Life. We must hold fast to that fundamental existential truth. We must stand arm in arm with love as the reminding shield against any forces of any empire that removes freedom, sustenance, care, and truth.

So, if we stand on a hill overlooking the battlefield plain spread out before us, we can easily see the forces of cruelty, greed, mayhem, and evil insanity. They are facing off against the forces with the greatest three spiritual gifts in their quivers: faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. May we work diligently, each in our own Spirit-guided ways, to pray & act with “profound human understanding” to proselytize, teach, lure, and brandish Divine Love that holds cosmic powers over our world, while banishing all golden calves and false idols.

We Are The Words of Jesus

 One of the hobbies my father had when I was growing up involved finding quotes, and then he would "print" the quote on a piece of 1/4" plywood by gluing macaroni letters to it.  Then he would shellac it, and it would then be placed in various locations around our house. One of his plaques I remember said, "Be aware you may be the only Bible someone reads." 

That memory came to me as I was reading a devotional I'm using for Lent: A Book of Hours.  It is a week's collection of daily prayers compiled from Thomas Merton's writings.  If I had the plywood and macaroni letters, I would do this plaque tonight from this source:

"Contemplation is the response to a call: a call from Christ who has no voice, and yet who speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being, for we ourselves are words of his."

 In my Christian experience, this captures a valuable orientation for our faith, one that puts in sharp relief how politics, grievances, and corruption are moving people further and further away from the persona and teaching of Jesus. Many calling themselves "Christian" have badly forgotten how to be like Jesus. If we aren't modeling Jesus in our daily lives, can we really expect the world to improve?