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Really, this Journey is about learning how to mean and live the words, “I love you.” These words many of us began using at a young age. As we get older, we realize both the wonder and cost of really caring for others, saying, “I love you” and meaning it, too, meaning it enough to stand by those words, as best we can. We will fail, at times, but that failure is not the denial, the denial is to give up trying in an egotistical self-enclosure, shutting ourselves off from the risk of love and, thereby, the joy of love.
Know, likewise, that we are given what we give. We suffer not so much from the love we did not get, rather, we suffer from the love we deny ourselves now. And one of the main ways we can deny ourselves this love is by refusing to give it. When we love, we find love returning to us. When we stretch ourselves, wisely, beyond the boundaries of wounds incurred from the past, we find love again. We find, even amidst the betrayals and denials we have experienced and, possibly, have committed ourselves, love remains, for Love is I AM. Love is Here, always waiting, forgiving, freeing, reconciling, and renewing us in joy. Love gave us birth, sustains us, and leads us.
Spiritual Exercises
1. What does love mean to you?
2. Reread the Sagely Word. What does "your body's deeper need" imply to you? How can sexual expression be a healthy means of fulfilling that need? How can sexual expression be an unhealthy means of fulfilling that need?
3. Read the following affirmation. What do you think about it? Feel about it?
“There is only one principle through which I interpret and apply Scripture. That one principle is Love.”
4. If the above interpretive principle were true, how would that affect the reading, interpretation, living, and sharing of Scripture?
5. When was the last time someone said to you, “I love you”? What did that feel like for you?
6. When was the last time you spoke to a person, “I love you”? What was the response? What did you feel like in saying it?
7. Is there someone in your life whom you need to say, “I love you” to? Do it, right away.
8. What attracts you or not to the following statement? If it is true, how can it shape your life? Relationships with others? Sharing of your experience of faith? Explain.
“A relationship with God is simply a relationship of Love.”
9.Do your daily prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading, …
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