a lectio divina: the Way of love, part three
"He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very own skin." —Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, book one, Sorcerer’s Stone
You need to be generous to yourself in order to receive the love that surrounds you. You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search long years in lonely places, far outside yourself. Yet the whole time, this love is but a few inches away from you. It is at the edge of your soul, but you have been blind to its presence. Through some hurt, a door has slammed shut within the heart, and you are powerless to unlock it and receive the love. We must remain attentive in order to be able to receive. –—John O’ Donohue (1956-2008)
Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time, unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope… But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here. —- The way of love, chapter 23; Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry
Because of the Lord’s loyal love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness. —prophet Jeremiah, book of Lamentations 3:22-3
Pride no longer rules our lives when love is primary. Pride is defined by desire. It presumes that my desire should be fulfilled and that it is a crying shame if they are not. The opposite of love is pride. Love, eliminates pride because it nullifies our arrogant presumption that we should get our way. With love, pride and fear fade. — Dallas Willard
Until we love and until we suffer, we all try to figure out life and death with our minds. Love, I believe, is the only way to initially and safely open the door of awareness and aliveness, and then suffering for that love keeps the door open and available for ever greater growth. We dare not refuse love or suffering or we close the door to life itself. By honoring God’s image in our own deep capacity to love, and then extending it to both the innocent and the non-innocent, we achieve the triumph of love... — Richard Rohr
…the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the holy spirit who was given to us. —Paul, letter to Romans ch. 5: 4b
In contemplative deep prayer, we move from ego consciousness to soul awareness, from being fear-driven to being love-drawn. — Rohr
Logos by Mary Oliver
Why wonder about the loaves and fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
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