GET GOD...OR LOVE

My prayer: To let go of the love I have in me...not to get love but to give what I have, all bottled up and never used.

I found my prayer, dated June 3, 1993, this morning, and I had to smile. I've been in many conversations the last couple years about how easily I say "I love you" to all but strangers today...and not by rote but with an up-beat in my heart.

I used to find it next to impossible to say "I love you" even to my dog Ari, my first "little angel straight from Heaven," who came to me in 1979. Actually, he was likely my first living, breathing teacher of love...that was his reason for living, to love and to be loved, and he made no secret of it.

But we're moving on up to a deeper place now. It is time and past time to learn...not by rote but with an up-beat in our heart...how to begin to love the unlovable, the less-thans, the jerks, knaves, fools and freaks. (All of whom are myself, I am reminded with chagrin.) 

That came to me this morning when I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" in which he said, Jesus and Saint Francis had a genius for not eliminating or punishing the so-called negative side of the world, but incorporating and using it.

The most important message  to me in that sentence is not how wonderful Jesus and Saint Francis were (like, duh) but that this is the way to do life...this is the pattern to follow, the path to walk, the goal to set...punish, i.e., hate, nothing, love...just love.

I'm reminded again of what I believe...if hate conquered cancer, the world would be cancer free. Not that love conquers cancer, just our fear of it which is close enough to perfect for me.

But who's kidding whom? We're not talking life-and-death here (but I'm guessing it is easier to love cancer when facing certain death by cancer if only to cover our bets for making it by Saint Peter), we're talking love of the one who speaks ill of us, tells lies, spits in our eye...that jerk. Cancer schmancer...how do we love the personally unlovable one?

The answer is always the same when the question has to do with others...ego deflation in depth. Forget self. Put the other person first. Elementary, my dear dum-dum. But the elementary puts quantum physics in the shade when we try to go it alone.

This is the gut-bucket first, last, always reason to seek still more spiritual growth: Not for God, per se, but to get over our own self. Which cannot be done without God, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. According to me.

Thank you.