Good morning…
After yesterday’s blog post, Claim This First Love, a dear friend sent me Richard Rohr’s morning meditation for the same day, April 6th. It is as if Rohr is singing to us the next stanza in God’s endless love song.
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Love Revealed by Richard Rohr
Julian of Norwich… teaches us that God’s love has nothing to do with rules and retribution and everything to do with mercy and compassion. She shows us that our failings and transgressions are simply an opportunity to learn and grow, and should be honored as such, but not dwelled upon. She translates the sorrows of this life as tastes of Christ’s passion and assures us that all passing pain will be transmuted into endless joy.
Most of all, Julian of Norwich promises that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, all is well. Not just that creation was beautifully made to begin with, and that it will all work out in the end, but that everything is all right at every moment, if we could only look through the eyes of love. Such a perspective is difficult to sustain, Julian would be the first to admit. In rare moments of unitive consciousness—watching the sun rise, maybe, or giving birth, or singing to God in community—we may have fleeting glimpses of the cosmic design and see that it is good.
But then the veil drops again and we forget.
(Because of our continual forgetfulness, Julian ends her Long Text with an emphasis on divine love. Note that while Julian here uses male pronouns for God, throughout her work she also shows that God is beyond gender by consistently calling God both Father and Mother.)
…God wants us to know that he loved us before he even made us, and this love has never diminished and never will. All his actions unfold from this love, and through this love he makes everything that happens of value to us, and in this love we find everlasting life. Our creation has a starting point, but the love in which he made us has no beginning, and this love is our true source ((Mirabai Starr’s The Showings of Julian of Norwich: A New Translation, xix, 224–225).
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Because of our continual forgetfulness, we must keep our emphasis on divine love, returning again and again to this limitless first love, rooted in the place where we hear the voice of God, our True Source.
As for you, divinely loved ones, since you are forewarned of these things, be careful that you are not led astray by the error of the lawless and lose your firm grip on the truth. But continue to grow and increase in God’s grace and intimacy with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May he receive all the glory both now and until the day eternity begins. Amen! (2 Peter 3:17-18, TPT).
“The Aramaic does not use the imperative but makes it more of a decree: ‘You continue to be nourished in grace and in the intimate knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah, and of God the Father’,” says the footnote for verse eighteen. “Spiritual growth is yielding to the grace of God and having passion to know Jesus Christ intimately. In time, we grow into his beautiful image.”
Over time, we grow spiritually into Christ’s beautiful image. How does this happen to us ordinary people? First we yield to God’s grace. Next we witness the LORD increasing our passion to know Jesus Christ intimately. Yield. Increase. As we yield, Christ increases.
This is where the Confuscius quote comes into play. “It does not matter how slow I go as long as I do not stop.”
“The first love says: ‘You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others,'” Henri Nouwen now joins the love song of God’s April 6th synchronicity. “‘You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance. You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.’ Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us. It requires discipline to come home and listen, especially when our fears are so noisy that they keep driving us outside of ourselves. But when we grasp the truth that we already have a home, we may at last have the strength to unmask the illusions created by our fears and continue to return again and again and again.” He must increase, but I must decrease. [He must grow more prominent; I must grow less so] (John 3:30, AMPC).
…Sue…
