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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. 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 – A Contemplative Interspiritual Fellowship.
QUOTE
What happens is that the separate entity that is you apparently disappears and nothing seems to be left but a pure freedom indistinguishable from infinite Freedom, love identified with Love. Not two loves, one waiting for the other, striving for the other, seeking for the other, but Love Loving in Freedom.
*Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. “Pure Love.”
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
After having to speak of a person whom I had felt deeply hurt by, something uprising happened within me. To have to refer to this painful past situation - deep feelings of betrayal had been difficult, markedly hurtful - was disturbing. Suddenly, however, while alone in quiet, I began to feel a fresh Love, a gentle and non-judgmental acceptance of the person.
I mean “within” as arising from the Center, God-Within, for this could not merely arise from my logical mind. Indeed, to the human mind this sensation of Loving forgiveness may appear everything but logical. Certainly, such Generous Grace does not arise from calculating why we should love one whom we feel betrayed by. Yet, this Grace came like a Gift, partly due to other inner healing and convergences that prepared my heart to sprout a bloom of such Generosity.
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In Luke 15 we read of a dad whose son betrayed him. The boy demanded his inheritance, abandoned his family, and scampered along the road to a life of depravity, squandering every penny he had. He, a non-pork Jew, ends up feeding the porky pigs in the smelly swine sty.
Here is surprising, apparent illogical Grace, immense and seemingly senseless Love on display: “And he arose and walked back home to his father. But when the son was a far way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, kissing him” (Luke 15.20).
The dad was willing to appear foolish. He did appear foolish to his older son, who refused to forgive his brother. To the dad, forgiving the son was the springing forth of the always-abundant Love in his heart. For the father to appear foolish was witness to a Grace that freely forgives before being asked to forgive.
The father “felt compassion.” I mention above the feeling I had in the moment of sensing a fresh Love. Forgiveness, again, is not merely a cerebral thing. Forgiveness and its Grace arises as a spiritual feeling that transmutes past feelings of a contrary nature.
Before forgiving, since our Love is not as ardent and free as Love makes actual, our will to love someone afresh, to release the person and ourselves from the past, begins with willingness to do so. And, likely, when fresh Love arises for someone who has deeply wronged us, we find that the reforming of our seeing and feeling toward the person comes as a gift, a surprising arising in a moment we did not and could no anticipate.
© OneLife Ministries. Feb 11, 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.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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