{"id":10407,"date":"2026-08-27T22:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T02:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=10407"},"modified":"2026-08-27T22:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T02:55:08","slug":"love-what-god-loves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=10407","title":{"rendered":"Love What God Loves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10408\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Boyle61-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What we get most wrong about God is that God can be pleased or displeased.  I was directing a group retreat on Zoom during the pandemic, and one of the retreatants asked, &#8220;Well, isn&#8217;t God pleased with some things and displeased with other things?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I said: &#8220;We smile and frown, &#8216;cuz we&#8217;re human beings.  God doesn&#8217;t smile at us &#8230; God adores us.  And God doesn&#8217;t frown, either, &#8216;cuz God&#8217;s too busy adoring us.&#8221;  God&#8217;s whole being says, &#8220;There is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you.&#8221;  We want to be rooted in this loving presence.  Find the pony.  Feel God&#8217;s adoration.  Julian of Norwich called it &#8220;Oneing.&#8221;  Gregory of Nyssa described it as &#8220;intimacy with God,&#8221; where we are granted a taste of our oneness with God, and when we don&#8217;t feel it, the taste only serves to galvanize our longing for more.  Kabir said, &#8221; When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.&#8221;  We are invited to love what God loves, which is quite different from doing things that please God.  The prayer of our life is to lean toward the God of love and say, &#8220;Give me your eyes.  Then all we&#8217;ll see is glorious.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Gregory Boyle, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/cherished_belonging.html\">Cherished Belonging<\/a><\/em>, p. 24<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Mont Saint-Michel, June 17, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What we get most wrong about God is that God can be pleased or displeased. I was directing a group retreat on Zoom during the pandemic, and one of the retreatants asked, &#8220;Well, isn&#8217;t God pleased with some things and displeased with other things?&#8221; I said: &#8220;We smile and frown, &#8216;cuz we&#8217;re human beings. God [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-life","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10409,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10407\/revisions\/10409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}