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We cannot know God in the other or the other in God as long as we cling to the other, even if we do so in a pure motive. We experience the kiss infused by Grace in a detached love that welcomes a more intimate intimacy than we could have by prior expressions of love. So, the less I in myself need you, the more I can love God in you and, then, you in God.
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And we return to that Simone Weil reminds us of - [see Lotus of the Heart, "the Valley spirit ~ the wisdom of Emptiness," May 5, 2020], in Love in the Void - : finally, only God loves God.
Prior loves prepare one for this more intimate intimacy. All loves in themselves are of Grace. Of these prior loves, Weil identifies four in which the Divine hides in secret, waiting to be appear directly to us: religious ceremony, beauty of the world, neighbor, friendship. Of these loves, she says . . .
They do not disappear when the love of God in the full sense of the word wells up in the soul; they become infinitely stronger and all loves taken together make only a single love.
The veiled form of love necessarily comes first, however, and often reigns alone in the soul for a very long time. Perhaps, with a great many people, it may continue to do so till death. Veiled love can reach a very high degree of purity and power.
Hence, detachment certainly is not an unfeeling state; rather, the detachment Merton refers to can be intense. He recognizes this potential of misunderstanding detachment as a stoical aloofness.
It would be absurd to suppose that because emotion sometimes interferes with reason, that it therefore has no place in the spiritual life. Christianity is not stoicism. . . . Detachment is not insensibility.
Hence, the gateway to loving one in God, by infused Grace, is the spiritual kiss. Yet, "spiritual" dissolves in the immediate knowing-loving of the One. All prior loves, what Weil calls "indirect" or "implicit" love of God, prepares for this spiritual kiss, while this kiss prepares one for the infused loving. Friendship, therefore, is a preparatory love for many, and one enhanced in contemplative awareness. Therefore, the Eastern differentiation of "knowing about" and "knowing" is useful here. Most friendship is of the subject-object knowledge, an "I" with an "I" at best. Friendship subsumed in the knowing, or direct, unmediated knowing, is heart-with-heart, so God-with-God, not person-with-person. Spiritual contemplation prepares one for this direct knowing, which is a loving knowledge, for such a wisdom path humbles the self, placing Life at the center, when self, or "I," was the center prior. The "I" cannot love God, or anything, in the intimacy of the infused kiss of Grace. One gives up his or her claim to love anyone, allowing Love to love. One becomes the Sacrament of Love, consumed in the Fire of Love by Love. One becomes the Food of God, given to the world, Life for Life.
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Aelred referred to the spiritual kiss as that between friends who do not need physical contact. This is "an affection of the heart" and "a meeting of spirits." Such intimacy is possible for, in the language of today, this friendship is nonlocal: "There is one spirit in many bodies." Spirit is pervasive, and even as we have union with the Divine, mingling Spirit-with-spirit, we can enjoy the same in intimacy with friends. However, this intimacy can be sustained between two only when both are prepared to maintain such closeness. Otherwise, this intimacy may be sporadic only, if at all. So, we are fortunate to have one friend to share this with as a stable, inner communion. Many of us will never know this with anyone in this sustained way, partly for few will welcome the humbleness that allows them, in nonpossessive love, to embody it but for fleeting moments at best. That is, one cannot share this closeness with another unless it is stable within oneself and the other.
We commit a mistake in identifying ourselves as a body with a soul, rather than one body in the universal soul; that is, thinking our singular body has a soul to itself, such as my soul, and inside my body. This mistake is that we can sense the spirit, or soul, of another, rather than the one spirit, or soul, recognizing itself through the two bodies. The friend, in love, mirrors you, for you and the friend are not other than each other, only in bodies other than each other. In being drawn to love another, we are drawn to ourselves, and the delight is that we love ourselves in loving the other. This nonlocality is why, furthermore, we sense the presence of someone we love at a distance; yet, at the level of the intellectual kiss, the other is not at a distance.
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