Love is what you are.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Becoming Who You Are"
"Divine Indwelling"
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Love is not really an action that you do. Love is what you are. Love is a place that already exists inside you. It is a place you must learn to go to, which is within you but bigger than you at the same time. That’s the paradox. It’s within you and yet beyond you. That’s why what characterizes this True Self is a sense of abundance, of enoughness. You know you’ve found the deep well, as Teresa of Avila put it, or, as Jesus put it, a well that will never go dry (John 7:38) and will never stop flowing. It will only increase by usage, as all spiritual gifts do (whereas material gifts decrease by use).
Love is not something you can buy, nor something you can attain or work up to, because you already have it, it is your deepest identity. It is quite simply the presence of God within you. Our word for that has been the Holy Spirit, uncreated grace, or the divine indwelling. God always loves and is forever united to this love within you. It is this that God sees in you, loves in you, and cannot reject.
When you pray, I think what happens is that you are steadfastly refusing to abandon this place that knows and believes, loves and trusts. You’re going to this place saying, “I’m staying here. I’m standing here. I’m going to believe this.” That’s daily prayer, that’s eating the daily bread to again believe the Gospel, to again believe the divine indwelling, to again trust and draw upon who you most deeply are. You gradually learn how to live there, how to draw your strength and solace from there, how to draw your dignity from this abundance.
Adapted from True Self/False Self, Disc 2 (CD)
Gateway to Silence: Love is the presence of God within me.
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