Loving and Being Loved-Intro
We are not loved because we are so beautiful and good. We are beautiful and good because we are loved. Jürgen Moltmann
Gregg’s Reflection
I am an Enneagram 8. The childhood wound of the 8 is that they grew up in an unsafe environment. they didn’t feel safe to show any vulnerability, and may have felt controlled. Weakness was used against them, so they focused only on building their strength (from the EnneaApp).
My father lost his mother before he was 10. His father left him to be reared by his stern grandmother. He grew up durning the Depression, and fought in World War II. He did not know how to show love, only to challenge. My primary messages from my father were ‘not good enough’, and the most he could say was, ‘I love you anyway.’ Two years of therapy helped me understand that deep within was a little boy who just wanted his father to love him.
So, you can imagine what my image of God was. A stern father, just waiting to whack me when I fell short. So, every time I fell short of my father’s view of perfection, my feelings of unworthiness grew.
Richard Rohr teaches us:
When God looks at us, God can only see “Christ” in us. Yet it's hard for us to be naked and vulnerable and allow ourselves to be seen so deeply. It is hard to simply receive God's loving and all-accepting gaze. We feel unworthy and ashamed. The very essence of all faith is to trust the gaze and then complete the circuit of mutual friendship.
As an Enneagram 8, being vulnerable was the last thing I wanted, and it was indeed hard to simply receive God’s love. Rohr goes on to tell us:
If we are lucky, we received a combination of both kinds of love from our parents. Experiencing unconditional love as a child gives us a strong sense of self. Yet we need to hear the sacred no-something to bump up against, to discover limits or we will never go deep and discover the best in ourselves.
At best, a father’s love is also conditional because it teaches the son discipline and a conditional demand against our own natural egocentricity.
Indeed, I learned many things from my father, persistence, perseverance, commitment to task, and high standards of excellence. Unfortunately, he also taught me I needed to be all these things to be loved.
It was a long road to accept that God loved me ‘anyway.’ Now I realize that we can only love to the extent that we allow ourselves to be loved. My dear wife Genie has loved me unconditionally for over 50 years, and she helped melt my hard heart to love. What a wonderful gift to give someone. So, wade in and see just how much you are loved by God. A final gift from Rohr, “God does not love us because we are good, God loves us because He is good.”
Journaling Prompts
What is your image of God, compassionate and loving, or stern and judgmental? How does that impact your self-image? How do you experience God’s loving presence? What spiritual practices let you let go of fear and be vulnerable, to let others see your weaknesses and love you just as you are?
Scripture
Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
Proverbs 10:12
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Psalm 103:8
I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
Jeremiah 31:3
The eyes of the Lord are on those who love Him.
Sirach 34:19
Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Mark 12: 29-30
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Faith, hope and love abide these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13
You, all of you, are sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26
Follow God’s example, therefore as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:1-2
Ancient Writings
Love is the highest form of knowing.
St. Augustine
Love is the fountain of life, and the soul which does not drink from it cannot be called alive. Here are his four degrees of love:
The 1st Degree: Loving Yourself For Your Own Sake (Selfish Love)
The 2nd Degree: Loving God for Your Own Blessing (Dependence on God)
The 3rd Degree: Loving God for God’s Own Sake (Intimacy with God)
The 4th Degree: Self-Love for God’s Sake (Being United with God’s Love). From his book, The Love of God
Bernard of Clairvaux
Some of us believe God is all-power and can do all, and that God is all-wisdom and knows how to do all. But God is all-love and wants to love all, and here we restrain ourselves. And this ignorance hinders most of God’s lovers, as I see it...God wants to be thought of as our lover.
Julian of Norwich, Brendan Doyle, Meditations with Julian of Norwich p. 119, 113
It is the condition of a true lover that the more he loves, the more he longs to love.
Cloud of Unknowing, trans. It’s Progiff, p. 100
Simply to love is its own reward.
St. John of the Cross, Naked Now, p. 141
Modern Writings
When you send love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer. Prayer is the act and presence of sending this light from the bountifulness of your love to other people to heal, free, and bless them.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, p. 35-36
What had I learned about love? One of the central things was that the experience of being understood by another was of primary importance. Somewhere deep within was a “place” beyond all faults and virtues that had to be confirmed before I could run the risk of opening my life up to another. To find ultimate security in an ultimate vulnerability, this is to be loved.
Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart p. 148
The root of Christian Love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved, the faith that one is loved by God, although unworthy.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 75
Divine love is compassionate, tender, luminous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything.
Thomas Keating, Open Hearts Open Minds, p. 160
We are not loved because we are so beautiful and good. We are beautiful and good because we are loved.
Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Joy, CAC video interview, 2014
The mystical certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God grows when we ourselves become one with love by placing ourselves, freely and without guarantee of success, on the side of love.
Dorothee Sölle, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 278
Love is to be found only in fearlessness and freedom.
Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love, p. 88.
We have such a need for love that we often expect from our fellow human beings something that only God can give, and then we quickly end up being angry, resentful, lustful, and sometimes even violent.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 10/20/20
When we love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, we cannot do other than love our neighbor, and our very selves. It is in being fully rooted in the heart of God that we are creatively connected with our neighbor as well as with our deepest self.
In the heart of God we can see that the other human beings who live on this earth with us are also God’s sons and daughters, and belong to the same family we do. There, too, I can recognize and claim my own belovedness, and celebrate with my neighbors.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 11/17/20
Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the inner experience of love. This alone becomes the engine of positive change.
Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, p. 1
Remember, as soon as any giving wants or needs a reward in return, you have backed away from love, which is why our common notion of ‘heaven’ can keep us from the pure love of God or neighbor. A pure act of love is its own reward, and needs nothing in return. Love is shown precisely in an eagerness to love. Please dwell on these things.
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 243
Lover of All
Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives,
Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .
In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . .
May we live in this love.
May we never doubt this love.
May we know that we are love,
That we were created for love,
That we are a reflection of you,
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness
That we are because you are.
Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love p. 21-22.
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:43-45) Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving one’s enemy. He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the easiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
So when Jesus said “Love your enemy,” he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives. . . .
Richard Rohr, CAC Daily Devotion, 11/9/20
We long for God because God longs for us.
Ilia Delio
To truly love God is to love what God loves and it is us which God loves most. Therefore, in the pursuit of the love of God we must begin with ourselves. When we truly love ourselves then we see ourselves as God does. Because we are the image of God we can only love God as much as we first love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves we are seeing a false image that is not of God. If we saw, with eyes truly opened, who we really are, then we would have no choice but to love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves then we do not have the truth.
Justin Coutts, To Love Yourself is the Beginning of Wisdom, In Search of a New Eden, 6/20/21
The whole of Jesus’ ministry was to establish a community so convinced of their Belovedness to God that they proclaim the Belovedness of others. Belovedness is a massive act of owning and accepting your humanness as a gift from a God who deeply loves you.
Osheta Moore, Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace, p. 97