"Love Flows"

 Richard Rohr said:

... the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.

(from his daily meditation on 12/30/22)

Feasting on Love

 Gibran is quoted as saying, "Hate is love starved."  

Don't starve those around you.  Feed them with love and kindness and compassion.

Good Love

 Saul Bellow said:  A man (person) is only as good as what he (or she) loves.

What are you loving?  Is it worthy?  Are you better for it?  Is it (or they) better for it?

(Seize the Day, New York: Viking Press,1956)

Real men & women love

 Ken Wilber in his classic love story book, Grace and Grit, concludes that...

"Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far behold yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you."  (page 396, 3rd Edition)

Love is Calling you Higher

 "True love demands sacrifice, because true love is a transforming force and is really the birth-pangs of union on a higher plane."

from The Recapitulation of the Lord's Prayer

Transcend Yourself through Love

 "Love is a time-honored way to transcend the separate-self sense and leap into the sublime."

(page 23, Grace and Grit, Ken Wilber, Third Edition, Shambhala Publications, 2020)

Have you leaped yet?  Transcend yourself...

What is love actualizing in you?

 "If there is a secret to love's transforming power, surely it must lie in its uncanny ability to call forth who we truly are.  "Love always seeks the ultimately real," says Bruteau; it has an infallible knack for pushing through dim outer shells and inner dark places and bringing the essence of who we are into the light.  Love always brings about an increase in being, and it does so by giving us the courage and power to live out who we truly are.  This is the simple and completely straightforward meaning of that fundamental esoteric doctrine:  love actualizes essence."

Cynthia Bourgeault writes this in her book, Love is Stronger than Death, page 115.  I think she is quoting Beatrice Bruteau.  She quotes her often, and her mystical insight gives me pause.  

May the force be with you

 "love...is the fundamental creative force in the universe."

Have you ever thought of that?  

Cynthia Bourgeault

Love is stronger than death

Monkfish Book Publishing

page 16

Hidden Potential Expressed by Love

 "The act of loving brings hidden potential to full expression."  (page 95)

"I loved in order to be known" ---In order to become known to another, we must take the risk of loving that person, and this includes the real possibility of rejection and the even more painful prospects of heartbreak if the beloved is lost to us.  It is difficult to risk love in a world so fragile and contingent." (page 99)

The Wisdom Jesus

Cynthia Bourgeault

Don't define it - BE IT!

 "Love is not something you do;

          love is someone you are."

Richard Rohr has captured it again.  It's not what you do, it's who you are.

(from the Divine Dance, page 193)

In His Image/Likeness --- we love

 Genesis (1:26) teaches us that God made man "in his image - in his likeness."  Actually, "our" image, "our likeness."  We presume the "our" to be the Trinity:  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  It is the only thing in the creation narrative that is in God's, The Trinity's image.  Well, what is in "his image"?

I John 4:8 and 16 say - GOD IS LOVE

JESUS says in John 13:34 - "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you."  Then a little later says in John 15:12, "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you."

Romans 5:5 says, "God love has been poured into our hearts through the HOLY SPIRIT who has been given to us."

So, it is all there.  Do we see it?  Do we tie it together?  If we are in His image, in the image/likeness of the Trinity - we love.  As they say, "Enough said!"

Richard Rohr on the Quest for the Grail

 ...."in the end there is only love.

Love without power is only sentimentality, cheap and innocuous religion.

However, power without love becomes brutality and that's what every culture instinctively moves toward: self-protection and self-aggrandizement.  Once we have learned the truth of the Grail, of love, we cannot believe the world of power is adequate or a correct response to reality.  The heroic journey unites power and love.

Love is not given to us to help us solve our problems. Love, rather, leads us into our problems.  It's love that leads us on the quest and ultimately to a final, universal, and grounding love.  It's a love we can trust because we know it is not all up to us.  We do not have to secure ourselves because we are radically secured - we are beloved children in a benevolent universe.

One true love is all that is necessary."

excerpts from Richard Rohr from his book Quest for the Grail

 "Love is never abstract."

~Wendell Berry

p. 200

What Are People For?

How abstract are you making love?  How real and concrete is your love?

It is not ephemeral.  It is not effete.

It is eternal and it is real.

How can you make your love more real, accessible, available to those around you?

How mature are you?

 "Love is our most mature act as human beings."

page 245

Eugene H. Peterson

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

What is your life painting?

 Artist and missionary to Algeria, Lilias Trotter, wrote in her diary: 

"Measure thy life by loss, not by gain; not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.  For love's strength standers in love sacrifice, and he who suffers most has most to give."

A great English artist gave up her craft to serve the women and children of Algeria, for the greater good.  By her life she painted the most valuable portrait of life and love.

Val Kilmer's Quote on Love and Healing

"Healing is not born of vanity,

it is born of honesty.

Honesty is born of pure love,

and love is the most divine healer, sweetest, holiest, and most effective."

Val Kilmer

May we all be healed by divine love.

Need a definition?

 

What are you tasting?

 "Love is the experience of our shared being....

Love is not a relationship....it is the taste of eternity."

Rupert Spira

Being Myself

Delight in Love