*Rublev Trinity, Jim Forest, Flickr
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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
*Thomas Merton
So, receive one another, as Christ has received us, to the glory of God.
*Christian New Testament. Romans 15.7.
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I am still learning, more and more, about Love and Love Loving. I learn more and more the subtle selfishness that seems to penetrate almost, if not all, I think and do. How can I appreciate one without seeing the other?
Part of the Beauty of the image of the Trinity is that it mirrors back to us the Heart of Life. This Three-in-One, or One-in-Three, is of the natural way of being in the world: receiving one another, in a Love and Love Loving transcending our capacities.
Love is prior to Love Loving, and all action of Loving is grounded in the capacity of Love prior to Loving. We could say God is Love, and God loves. Yet, also, there is a mysterious interpenetration of God Loving and our loving, so we can somehow speak of this Love as One.
The more I join with Love, the more I am formed in the image of Love. The more I give myself to Love, the more Love Loving passes to others through my being with them, the more I naturally provide a space of Hospitality for them in the Heart. This inner receptivity is more vital to our world than an outer formation of hospitality and precedes the more pure expressions of Kindness. Our loving passing through Love, in inner, silent Communion, works to purify our loving of the influences of the individual sense of self, based on separation, not Union. How have we come to have more faith, it seems, in separation, than Communion?
Love speaks of a Transcendence and an Immanence, both, that resides in the Inner Communion of Grace-with-Grace and is not grounded in the self of ourselves or any myself. Self is known in separation, Love in Communion, in Oneness.
Contemplative Prayer, we could say, is acknowledgement of and receptivity of Communion within the one Heart. Which, again, does not mean your or my Heart, but the Heart of Life, of God, of Everyone. So, my receiving of you is grounded in our Belonging together in the Heart of Love, eternally and already. All Love Loving, being of Grace, in particularity arises from Love transcending particularity. To say "I love you" means that I was already in Love with you all along. For, even as God cannot come to be, neither can Love, nor can this Love Loving in the smallest thought or act of receptivity of one person toward another person.
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*Christ the Redeemer in Rio..., Carlos Eduardo, Flickr
* * * CLOSING BLESSING * * *
Grace and Peace to All
The Sacred in Me bows to the Sacred in You
*You are welcome to contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
The presentations at this site cover a long time period. Each one represents part of an on-going Pilgrimage, and the writer's ideas, practices, and experience have changed over time. This change is the quality of any living Journey. Please read with this in mind, allowing the inner Teacher to speak to you as you need at this particular time in your own living Journey. Thanks!
