so i have been thinking about this. and i wondered to myself - can human beings really love 'god'? for all intents and purposes, 'god' is really an abstract concept; an idea really. can we devote our whole hearts to this idea of god? some might say that jesus was the human manifestation of god and that we are to love jesus. but again we are faced with trying to be in love with a prophetic figure who lived two millenia before now. not an awfully long period in the grand scheme of things but we can scarcely imagine what jesus was really like - it's kind of like a long distance relationship through letters really. again, we have an idea but nothing concrete.
so my question follows this thought that in the same way an artist puts a great deal of himself into his work, can it not be argued that the Creator has done the same with all that She has made? can we not fall in love with "god" by being present with all living things that have come from Her hand? is she not within these things? could it be that the collective existence of life is the embodiment of God Herself? and therefore, loving God is really just loving Her work?
but we must be careful, i think, not to generalize and just say "i love every living thing." i think the crux of the matter lies with being present with the individual. see every person, every animal, every tree, flower, plant as an individual. Anthony DeMello says that once a child has been taught the name of something - a cocount tree, for instance - that child will never again see another coconut tree but the first one that was named to her. (very loosely paraphrased). it's in doing this, i believe, that we miss out on hundreds (of thousands?) of potiential encounters with God. if i could let go of the urgency to be somewhere else and simply be with the people i am with at any given moment, then i think that is where i will meet, experience, share, in God; in Love.
for me, salvation lies in the life of jesus, much more so than in his death because he modelled this kind of presence so well. he was where he was. i guess i would say that his life was made up of countless moments.
a life of moments. wow. what a concept.
[edited to add that i will explain/explore gender terminology with reference to God in another post.]
About Me
- Milkshaken
- woman. writer. wife. mom. unschooler. navigating all of it in pursuit of love.
1 comment:
I like the thoughts you are expressing - praticularly about it being hard to love an idea especially one as abstract as God. I like where you're heading with "loving God by being fully present with and loving what She created" but I wonder if that holds up when the moments we find ourselves in are not very lovable. Think of moments when people hurt or disappoint us, where do we turn then?
i am wondering if our "loving" God is not something that we can even do. All we can really hope for is to realize the quality of God's love for us. Once we are safe in that love, we will live in new ways (more loving ways) than before.
The Apostle Paul talks about God holding creation together like a nursing mother holds her child (how's that for a gender image!) What is great about this picture is that it forces us to reconsider how we relate to God. Does the nursing child have any idea about the complexity and theological truths about their mother's love? the love that the child experiences is not an idea but a fully present reality. The best that the child can hope for is to learn to fully trust that love that they cannot comprehend. This is a picture of the relationship between us and god that allows for ALL people to have access, even those with mental and emotional challenges.
I would agree with your point about the connection between loving God and being present with reality but i would state it in reverse: when we realize that we are being held together in a loving embrace, we will automatically choose to be fully present with what God has created. until then we will be distracted by our fear and the entitlement that we fell about the meeting of our needs.
i look forward to hearing more!
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