Reflection: Love Itself

When was the last time you practiced “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”?  Maybe yesterday.  Maybe this morning.  Maybe last Sunday.  Maybe last night before bed or this morning when you woke up.  Perhaps it’s a moment before each meal.  Time before each communion.  

Perhaps it was last year.  Last decade.  Or never.  

Perhaps you feel a little lost and confused about God.  Perhaps you been a bit angry with God.  Perhaps you feel you don’t understand God.  Perhaps it feels like a crumbling world and a crumbling faith.  Perhaps all the foundation stones have crumbled and fallen away.  PAUSE.  It’s happened before.  Out of the crumblings, there is a rebuilding.  A rebuilding from lessons learned  and hearts opened that make those foundation stones of faith even stronger.  They fit together better. They hold you up more deeply.  

Saying we love God is easier than actually loving God.  

We’ve been grappling with loving God since the very beginning.  What does it mean to love God?  What is that love?  The nuns were considered “married to Christ”.  The mystics  talked of ecstatic love.  There’s God as Father or Mother.  God as Teacher. God as Brother or Sister.  God as Soul Friend.  How do we love God?  What are we loving?  How do we love something intangible?  Immense?  Beyond us?  The all-powerful?  Everything?  This incredible Mystery?

The most honest song I’ve ever heard about loving God is “I Don’t Know How To Love Him.”   

Entangled in loving God is this idea that God also loves me!!  Is that even possible?  That God loves me?  That God notices me?  That I’m worthy of that notice?  That incredible love?  

Maybe it helps to think of the ways in which we see God’s face.  In moments of forgiveness, when we expect the worst and we are instead embraced. In moments when we feel most forsaken and suddenly are held.  Victor Hugo said it well: to love another person is to see the face of God.  That, in some ways, brings this entire passage together.  

We barely understand Love itself.  Perhaps this is why it’s the greatest commandment.  To learn to love.  We shy away from love.  We cringe when it’s offered to us.  We’re afraid to offer it.  There’s so much “baggage” around “love”.  We have a hard time just using the word “love”.  Are we deserving?  Are they deserving?  What are the “rules” of the reciprocity of love?  Is it safe?

A friend recently admitted that she is always calling herself imperfect, even ugly.  Definitely “not pretty”.  Her daughter said to her one day, “if everyone says I look exactly like you, and you think you’re ugly, does that mean I am ugly too?”  PAUSE.  Perhaps it’s a “God Moment”.  A “Love Moment”.  We are the image of God.  That makes God the image of us. If we don’t love ourselves, what does that mean?  If we don’t love God, what does that mean?  

See?  Love.  It’s hard.  It’s full of “baggage”.  It’s complicated. Or maybe we just make it complicated.

Love of all kinds takes faith and trust. Perhaps this is why love is our hardest call and our first call.  What does it look like?  It looks like kindness. It looks like forgiveness.  It looks like compassion.  It feels like mercy.  It feels like hope.  It feels like pardon.  It is a bowl of soup and a single dollar bill. It feels like an embrace.  It looks like ease, but is work and intention.  

Perhaps this complexity is why we have a tendency toward skipping from love thy God to love thy neighbor.  There’s a face. There’s tangibility.  We think we know what kind of love we’re to extend toward our neighbors.  And loving thy neighbor is hard enough.  Especially when they are gruff and cranky or downright mean.  

Loving our own families can be hard.  Talk about “baggage”.  Nothing is easy about love, even when it looks easeful.    

Love ourselves….oh my.  That’s often a bag of baggage.

Love is a complex thing and yet it is our first and highest call.  “Love the Lord. your God. with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  When was the last time you loved God?  When was the last time you love God that deeply?  

Take a moment now to consider loving God.  Maybe it’s easy. Maybe it’s hard.  

Beloved.  

Father.

Mother.  

Brother.

Sister.  

Teacher. 

Soul Friend.  

Intangible Universe.

All-powerful power.  

Feeling.  

Mystery.  

___________.

Maybe this is why we need Jesus.  Jesus becomes a tangible focus for our love.  A human form to  love.  A human form to emulate.  A guide to teach us what love is.  To teach us to love Him. A guide to remind us to love others.  A beloved friend to remind us to love ourselves.  And helps us to take up the work that comes when we truly love ourselves.  

Taking a cue this week from Dr. Allen, maybe instead of how to love and what is love and who are we loving…let’s consider why we love.  

Why do we love God?   

Why do you love God? 

Ten reasons.  Yes, go ahead, begin to list them.  Notice which ones are universal and shared.  Notice which ones are deeply personal and private.  Notice the reasons why that are hardest to put on paper.  Notice what reasons feel like they lighten the load.  

There are post-it notes in your bulletin.  Please, write down on each a reason why you love God that you are willing to share.  No names are needed.  If you’re at home, reading this: list your ten; send me your post its (or comments) if you like–I’d love to share them.  

We don’t have to know how.  We don’t have to know or understand what or who.  For some, what and who are impossible to know and that’s okay.  We just have to remember why and from that the love will follow exactly as it is meant to.  

When you get lost and confused, come back to your why and if you can’t find your why…there are our shared why’s to bring us back to our greatest call: The call to Love.