ON LEARNING TO LOVE OUR ENEMY

We are not so much human beings trying to become spiritual. We’re already inherently spiritual beings and our job is learning how to be good humans! I believe that’s why Jesus came as a human being: not to teach us how to go to heaven, but to teach us how to be a fully alive human being here on this earth. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 9, 2018

I read Rohr's quote and felt a deep connection with it, but what grabbed me was his take on the reason Jesus came as a human being: to teach us how to be a fully alive human being here on this earth.

Jesus's teaching was based on love and love alone. According to me, getting to that place is based on God's mirror image of material reality; i.e., if it looks less than wonderful to the mind's eye, to God's eye it is wonderful.

That is The Way, the yellow brick road toward learning to love our enemy as our self.

See a jerk, recognize a friend in need, love him. Find our self at sixes and sevens with our own world...she's doing it wrong, he's baiting me, they're full of it...pull back, go silent (in mind and mouth), and affirm our powerlessness, our grateful powerlessness. Our attitude begins to upgrade in that moment.

Upgrade your attitude, you upgrade your problem.

It is giving over to God that begins the upgrade...staying silently receptive completes it which we will recognize by the lightness of our being and our smiling heart.

God loves us so much.

Thank you.