Suffering No Proof of Love

Compassion, Healing, Love 0

It’s amazing how many people believe that suffering is a proof of love. If I don’t suffer when you suffer, they think, it means that I don’t love you. How can that possibly be true? Love is serene; it’s fearless. If you’re busy projecting what someone’s pain must feel like, how can you be fully present with her? How can you hold her hand and love her with all your heart aas she moves through her experience of pain? Why would she want you to be in pain, too? Wouldn’t she rather have you present and available?…

You don’t have to feel bad to act kindly. On the contrary: the less you suffer, the kinder you naturally become. And if compassion means wanting others to be free of suffering, how can you want for others what you won’t give to yourself?

— Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy, p. 73, 74

The Best Way of Leading

Letting Go, Love, Relationships 0

I don’t know what’s best for me or you or the world.  I don’t try to impose my will on you or on anyone else.  I don’t want to change you or improve you or convert you or help you or heal you.  I just welcome things as they come and go.  That’s true love.  The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.

— Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy, p. 24

Beloved by God

Forgiveness, God, Love 0

If you believe that you are the beloved, you can offer forgiveness, even when it cannot be received.  For still you say, “I set you free and I am willing to forgive you even when you cannot forgive me, because I claim my belovedness.”  And you can move on, saying, “I can ask your forgiveness even though you cannot give it to me yet, and perhaps ever.”

— Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, p. 80

Breaking the Judgment Habit

Love, Relationships 1

When I embrace the practice of unconditional love — seldom an easy exercise, I might add — I am able to see how similar I am to those around me, and my habit of judgment lessens.  Please note the word “habit.”  Judgment does become a habit, and so can unconditional love, though it is more difficult to perfect.  A tool that has worked for me (when I remember to use it) is to express a statement of unconditional love out loud every time a judgmental thought crosses my mind.  Try it next time you find yourself gripped by judgment.  As soon as you catch it, state your unconditional love.  It works….

It’s easy to tell ourselves that we are not judging, we are merely observing.  But most often this is just a lie.  Our minds are quick to judge, and just as with any other thought, that which we focus on becomes magnified.  When it’s the failings of others or missed opportunities or cynicism or mean-spiritedness that we choose to focus on, these are the attitudes that are magnified, thus injuring all the people on our path and on their paths too.

Of course the reverse is likewise true.  If we choose to see the good in others, which is abundantly there, we will help to increase it in them, in ourselves, and in our communities as well, widening the circle of good with every glimpse.  The choice to see the good is always available to us.  It’s a mindset we can practice to the benefit of all….

As long as we sit in judgment of someone, we cannot experience peace.  With each judgment we make, we hurt all our relationships.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 55-58

The Best Attitude

Gratitude, Life, Love 0

Giving up judgmental attitudes requires that we replace them with some other attitude.  Our minds will not remain idle.  The best attitude to cultivate and the one that changes everything and everyone — you and all of the people you formerly judged — is gratitude.  Having an attitude of gratitude is what allows us to see everyone in our path as necessary and an opportunity for us to express unconditional love.  You see, judgment and love cannot coexist, and we’re expressing one or the other almost all the time.  Seldom are we indifferent to our experiences, to the people we are sharing those experiences with, and to the set of expectations we have created around those experiences.  Becoming more loving, attempting to develop the attitude of unconditional love, in fact, is the real assignment we have been given in this life.  No one can do the work for us.  No one can prevent us from doing the work.  And everyone benefits every time any one of us makes even a tiny effort to grow in our willingness to love rather than judge.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 53-54

Reading the Bible in Community

Community, God, Life, Love 0

Reading the Bible with others does not mean only that we read together in a small group, or that we read commentaries to benefit from the wisdom of great teachers, or that we listen to the Bible read and reflected on in worship or other gatherings.  It also means reading the Bible through the lens of others’ experiences, in the knowledge of others’ stories, in the midst of immersion in others’ lives.  For all this is in the service of loving God and loving one another.  It is not to make us more knowledgeable about the Bible’s text, although that is helpful.  It is not to make us more culturally sophisticated, although that is a benefit.  It is to plunge us deeper into life with God, and therefore deeper into life with one another, that we might take one more step toward the beloved, all-inclusive community centered in Christ.

— Richard J. Foster, Life with God, p. 105-106

A Life of Loving

Joy, Life, Love 0

Loving others will definitely improve your life right now.  Take that passion that is God’s gift to you and lavish it on others.  Think of yourself as being loved, because you are.  God loves you, and probably many others do as well.  Once you move from focusing on an absence of love to recognizing the abundance of love already within, you will stop postponing happiness.  A life of loving is available now.

— Mary Manin Morrissey, No Less Than Greatness, p. 72

Forgiveness as a Way of Being

Forgiveness, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

Forgiveness is an aspect of the workings of love.  It can be a bridge back from hatred and alienation as well as a liberation from two kinds of hell: bitterness and victimhood on one side; guilt, shame, and self-recrimination on the other.  The wish to repair a wounded relationship, whether it takes the form of forgiveness, apology, or some other bridging gesture, is a basic human impulse.  The need to forgive — which may grow out of understanding, gratitude, sympathy, regret over the hurt one has caused, or simply a wish to reunite — may be as strong as the need to be forgiven, even if it comes upon us more subtly.

All sustained relationships depend to some extent on forgiveness.  Successful marriage means an inevitable round of disappointment, anger, withdrawal, repair.  People hurt each other no matter how much love they share, and it’s a truism that the greatest hurts are meted out by the closest of intimates.  No friendship, no marriage, no family connections of any kind would last if the silent reparative force of forgiveness were not working almost constantly to counteract the incessant corrosive effects of resentment and bitterness, which would otherwise tear us apart.  Without forgiveness there could be no allowance for human frailty.  We would keep moving on, searching for perfect connections with mythical partners who would never hurt or disappoint.  In that sense, forgiveness should be thought of not only as a discrete event but also as a way of being.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection, p. 5-6

At My Most Monstrous

Forgiveness, God, Love 0

I know that when I am most monstrous, I am most in need of love.  When my temper flares out of bounds it is usually set off by something unimportant which is on top of a series of events over which I have no control, which have made me helpless, and thus caused me anguish and frustration.  I am not lovable when I am enraged, although it is when I most need love.

One of our children when he was two or three years old used to rush at me when he had been naughty, and beat against me, and what he wanted by this monstrous behavior was an affirmation of love.  And I would put my arms around him and hold him very tight until the dragon was gone and the loving small boy had returned.

So God does with me.

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 250-251

Forgiveness Like the Father

Compassion, Forgiveness, God, Love 0

It is through constant forgiveness that we become like the Father.  Forgiveness from the heart is very, very difficult.  It is next to impossible.  Jesus said to his disciples:  “When your brother wrongs you seven times a day and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I am sorry,’ you must forgive him.”

I have often said, “I forgive you,” but even as I said these words my heart remained angry or resentful.  I still wanted to hear the story that tells me that I was right after all; I still wanted to hear apologies and excuses; I still wanted the statisfaction of receiving some praise in return — if only the praise for being so forgiving!

But God’s forgiveness is unconditional; it comes from a heart that does not demand anything for itself, a heart that is completely empty of self-seeking.  It is this divine forgivenss that I have to practice in my daily life.  It calls me to keep stepping over all my arguments that say forgiveness is unwise, unhealthy, and impractical.  It challenges me to step over all my needs for gratitude and compliments.  Finally, it demands of me that I step over that wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and that wants to stay in control and put a few conditions between me and the one whom I am asked to forgive.

This “stepping over” is the authentic discipline of forgiveness.  Maybe it is more “climbing over” than “stepping over.”  Often I have to climb over the wall of arguments and angry feelings that I have erected between myself and all those whom I love but who so often do not return that love.  It is a wall of fear of being used or hurt again.  It is a wall of pride, and the desire to stay in control.  But every time that I can step or climb over that wall, I enter into the house where the Father dwells, and there touch my neighbor with genuine compassionate love.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 129-130