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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. I hope persons of varied faith paths will find inspiration here. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
WISE SAYINGS
To love is to know Me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am.
*Hinduism. Bhagavad Gita. 18.55.
Thomas Merton speaks of the grace of loving, using the word “charity,” which he uses for the highest form of love - Divine Love -, in his No Man is an Island:
In the economy of divine charity we have only as much as we give. But we are called upon to give as much as we have, and more: as much as we are. So the measure of our love is theoretically without limit. The more we desire to give ourselves in charity, the more charity we will have to give. And the more we give the more truly we shall be.
REFLECTIONS
Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.
*Rumi. Rumi's Divan of Shems of Tabriz. Trans. James Cowan.
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We all seek Love. We all seek the secret of living in the circle of lovers. This above all we seek. Yet, we may feel it is always just outside our grasp. We may ache for a Love that no one can seem to give us. Indeed, some of us seem born for this ache, while others seem to move through life dead to its call. Yet, some of us long only to reach and feel within the breast: beyond the forms of the world, into the essence of Grace.
I can recall my first love. The moment I laid eyes on Bonnie, when I was aged 18, I felt a magnetic attraction I had never known before. I met her at a private school, where I was invited to speak to the student body. She was the student who was present to welcome me to campus. She later called me, asking me out. We had a wonderful dinner out. I had no idea she was so attracted to me, as I was to her. Later, I found out she had seen me at revival meetings I was preaching near her home, and she had said to her mother that night, “One day, I'm going to date that boy.” Well, she did. We had two months together, but so wonderful the memory of them remains with me now, and I am grateful for those months. In some ways, it took me many years to get over Bonnie, such was the impact of that first love. But she was young, and I too, and she was too young, in her estimation, to make a commitment to me. So, the relationship ended as quickly as it began. I was heartbroken; some would say we had fallen out of love, or, at least, Bonnie had. In this world can love last? Can we “fall in love” and “remain in love,” not “falling out of love”?
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Our culture talks and sings much about “falling in love” and being “in love.” The challenge seems to be with “staying in love.” Anyone can fall, but how do you remain in love? How do you nurture that relationship, so that the love consistently grows? How do you protect it from deadening routine? And here I do not speak of only marital or romantic relationships in a narrow sense. Indeed, persons who do not share a romantic or sexual love can fall deeply in love with each other. And a person can fall deeply in love with all persons. So, do not simply think of the romantic associations of “falling in love,” possibly, I would better write this as “falling in love with Love.”
These questions apply in our relationship with Mystery, our Divine Lover, and Beloved. How do we grow our relationship, over time, with the Universal Spirit, Who is Love?
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We grow in love with Spirit through intentional practice. One practice is Remembrance. When you are in love with a person romantically, verily in love, you do not want to forget the person. You do not want to go off on a long trip and not stay in contact. Your mind returns to him or her often. In fact, you want to cherish the remembering and let the other person know you are thinking of him or her. You may go on a trip, and call back, saying, “I miss you, already. I love you very much.” Before returning, “I am leaving for home, I look forward to seeing you. I love you.” That is what love does. Love loves to remember the lover, the beloved. Love wants to express that, too. Essentially, then, love is as much a verb as a noun; Love is Love Loving, or Loving Love.
Each morning I get up early, and I am enthused, for I have fallen in love with Jesus, my Friend. I look forward to early morning hours alone with my Lover. Those are precious hours. For many years I “could not” get up early, but when I started having these loving-dates with my Love, I suddenly got used to arising with gladness early. See, I want to say, as I begin a day, “Friend, I love you. Good morning! Let us spend some time loving each other, enjoying the quietness of these before dawn hours.” Then, at night, I enjoy going to sleep in prayer and meditation. All this is the practice of Remembering.
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Another practice for staying in love with Love is living vows. I have been asked on different occasions why I live under vows. I have been told, and rightly, that I do not have to have those vows. Correct, I do not. Likewise, when two persons make vows to love only each other until death, those vows are not essential. The persons could love each other until death and never make the vows. Indeed, making the vows does not guarantee the fruit of lifelong love. Yet, the vows set up a context for the exercise of freedom within the specific commitment that is a sign of conscious and chosen devotion over time. The vows do not make anything, they do provide, however, a guide and inspiration agreed upon. Likewise, when we make vows spiritually. And a person does not have to be a member of a vowed community to do this; he or she can agree to specific vows in conscious dedication to the Divine.
These are two practices to assist in staying in Love with the Divine. Remembering and Vow Keeping parallel staying in love with others, also.
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Possibly, our Love of the Divine is most tested in the summons of obedience. Within the spiritual framework, obedience is a freedom, yet this freedom is a chosen limitation of rights on behalf of another or others, or Spirit. Wrongly, obedience is often taught and seen as a staid “yes” to what one is told he or she must do. Then, sacrifice is seen as pressing against the will to obey. No wonder many of us are afraid of surrender to the Spirit. This must-do obedience is not, however, the higher spirit of surrender. In the words of Thomas Merton, in his Life and Holiness:
In a word, the whole Christian life consists in seeking the will of God by loving faith and carrying out that blessed will by faithful love.
This spiritual staying in Love, then, is an integration of two aspects often seen as separate. In the spiritual worldview, love and fidelity are in perfect harmony. Love is the sign and expression of and in faithfulness, while faithfulness is the sign and expression of and in love.
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The Catholic church has formulated an image of the Trinity, one that I do not agree literally with, but is a sign of the nature of all faithful love – thus, symbolically a sign of the Nature of God. In this thought the Father and the Son are in relationship. The relationship brings forth the Holy Spirit; that is, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son via the expression of Father and Son in love toward each other. The Holy Spirit is the Love, or Loving, linking Father and Son. Yet, this bringing forth is not within time, but is within the Divine eternally. This implies, rightly, that Love is the bond that naturally exists between any two persons in fidelity to each other.
Finally, I once saw love of others and the Divine as two different matters. Now, I see them as able to be one, when a person is prepared and accepting of this mystical integration - but few persons are ready for this. That is, one can love God consciously through loving the other, and even seek union with Love - with God - by seeking a union-of-loving with the other.
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So, today, I share with you a Practice on Remembering, taken from Rabbi David A. Cooper, God is a Verb, on the practice of Kavvanah, which corresponds to Mindfulness Practice in Buddhism and Practicing the Presence of God in the Christian faith:
Get a watch with a timer. Set the timer for, approximately, but not exactly, an hour. Throughout the day, when the timer beeps, stop what you are doing as soon as possible. Take ten to twenty seconds to do a body scan. Be aware of what is happening in your body and, likewise, around you (I call this Coming Home). Where are you? What are you feeling? What is happening in different parts of the body? What sounds do you hear? What are you seeing? Each time you do this, give thanks for the fullness of the moment, for your awareness, and the abundance of life all around you. Every few days, change the time by a few seconds, to keep from getting in a routine. Keep your love fresh.
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 19, 2010.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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