October 25, 2009
Dear People Whom God Loves,
RELIGION IN A NEW CULTURE III
We continue to work with the image of God as Love. God is spirit and while our human loves give us a pointer to Love, they fall short. We should therefore not conclude that Love works just like human love works.
A valuable pointer though is that our human loving is very different from force and power. Love encourages, entices, and nurtures growth. It does not attempt to force it. Reaction to force may bring conformity in some cases, but it doesn’t foster the spiritual inner growth that we call love. We can nurture the growth of a flower by preparing the soil, by fertilizing, by watering, and giving it sunlight . . . but we can’t force it to grow.
In a similar fashion, we can nurture growth in love by accepting a person where they are; by hearing their story; by empathy with the struggles they have; by not thinking that we are superior to them (this applies even if our behavior is better than theirs); by seeing their value; and by helping them to believe that we care about them and are not concerned about imposing our will on them. In other words, we are loving them. It needs to be believable to them that our concern is for their happiness and good.
We will, of course, do this imperfectly; but to the degree that our love is genuine, it will shine through our mistakes.
I see this as a pointer giving us limited understanding as to what and who this Mysterious Love is and how this Mysterious Love acts.
I see this Mysterious Love working in us and in our world and universe (with all the junk that is there) to bring us to the goodness that love is. Love is what Mysterious Love is and what we and the universe are called to be.
Can I prove this? No. Do I believe it? Yes.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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