Divine Love

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I John 4:8

Here is one of my journal entries during a retreat I went on this past weekend.  It was absolutely incredible!

We are all so surrounded by God and so many of us don’t even know; don’t even see it. We are all being pursued by this wonderful Mystery and Love is its Name. Whenever we open ourselves up to love—sincere, genuine, authentic love—we open ourselves up to God. God can be experienced in the other, in knowing the other, in trusting the other, in loving the other and being loved by the other. A simple smile between friends, a word of empathy and compassion, simply holding hands—God is in it all. There’s no separation between the secular and the sacred because it is all sacred: the alarm going off in the morning, the daily shower, the brushing of teeth and combing of hair, the time we spend commuting to work or school can become just as sacred as a prayer. Indeed they become sacred prayers themselves if we lift up those daily routine moments to God. The Incarnation didn’t just take place once. No, the Incarnation is taking place every single moment of every single day, transforming the secular into the sacred, infusing humanity with the divine.

The veil has been torn. The separation has been done away with. There is now only One Divine Life that we are all partakers of. The blade of grass, the human soul, the single-celled bacterium, we are all partakers of the One Divine Life. God is the space that makes existence possible, the space from which all life arises and the space is everywhere and around everything. God is the inescapable reality without and within, the Riddle, the Puzzle that can never be fully solved, the Mystery that is beautiful to behold, marvelous to ponder, wondrous to embrace, even if we can never fully grasp this Mystery, this Love with our limited understanding.

Love, Divine Love is all there really is. Every second is infused with Divine Love. Everything else is illusion, temporary distractions that are passing away: the suffering, pain, fear, separation—they are all momentary disintegrating distractions. We were all put here to experience this Divine Love and it is always with us. From Divine Love we’ve come and when this particular journey is over to Divine Love we will return because it never left us in the first place. It cannot be denied and it animates all life. We can ignore it or forget about it, which is so easy to do; it’s so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life, but this Divine Love never leaves us, never leaves the human soul.

There is a Divine Voice within every human heart whispering, however softly, one word over and over and over again: love, love, love. When we hear this still small voice over and above all of the noisy illusions and distractions of life then and only then do we truly begin to live; we have passed over from death to life. We are set free from sin, and fear, especially the fear we have of ourselves. We have been born again into this Divine Love, to live in this Divine Love forever and ever and ever.