You gave me a rich gift: 6 months of Sabbath time to read, write, reflect, attend to some new disciplines, review 35 years of ministry, and mediate on the essence of my faith and where I am growing and changing. Thank you so much for such a precious gift of time!

As you might expect, my Dutch genes drove all manner of plans and objectives for the time, but it was the below-the-radar things that really grabbed my heart, mind, and soul. Plunging into "Joseph’s Boy," my somewhat fictional exploration of Jesus’ hidden years, from age 15-30, opened me in a wonderfully surprising way to the one to whom I have committed my life, and it sent me on an unexpected journey in which I examined my spiritual experiences and diversified my spiritual practices.

These lines in W. H. Auden’s poem, "Twelve Songs," capture the essence of my off-radar inquiry:

Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

1. How do you experience love: receiving it, giving it, directing your life, and guiding your relationships?

2. Most often, is love at the center, the periphery, or off to the side of your life?

3. Is love consciously constant or does it come to you in flashes of ecstasy or moments of epiphany?

4. And, most importantly, what is the relationship of love in your life to your union with the Divine?

In this union we share that essential quality of Divine love and we are moved to ever expanding and inclusive experiences of union beyond the Divine union, because of it – with another person, with an enemy, with the cosmos or the creation.

Human beings are hard-wired for a union with God that is fueled by love. This is the core message of Christianity and the central human longing, "when or if" we pay attention! Asked in the vernacular of Telly Savalas’ Kojak, the fundamental question in Christianity is, "who loves ya, baby?"

Let’s explore out loud how we personally experience God’s love and our union with the Divine. So, how do you experience God’s love?²

Some options:

• The Bible tells you so. (John 3:16-17)

• You believe in the sacrificial cross of Christ as the expression of

God’s love (Don’t do a movie review – think about what was happening to your heart and soul during the film.)

Mel Gibson – this is HOW Jesus died for you (substitutionary blood Atonement):

Byzantium exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: I was looking at the first iconography that was a double-sided scene, the front of which portrayed the familiar Orthodox image of the crucifixion, and on the other side the birth of Jesus. An elderly woman dressed entirely in black and with a thin, wispy mane of white hair, was wheeled beside me. She pushed herself up from the chair and grasped the sides of the cube holding the wood icon. In a thick, rich Mediterranean accent she said to her husband," This is so much better than Mel Gibson."

• Daily reminders of God’s love through

Prayer and meditation

Study, sharing, and service

Loving relationships and the mysteries of creation

1. God is love – Divine love is the unifying, basic life force,

2. Each of us is beloved of God – God loves ya, baby! More radically,

3. You are love - YOUR essential nature IS love, and

4. AS love, we live our daily lives in conscious union with Divine love.

There are things that block us from fully embodying the fact that we ARE love. And so often, we block the Divine intention that we are meant to live in union with God.

These are some of the blocks we may need to work on:
 

• The idea that love is solely a verb – known in actions.

• The idea that love is merely a concept or a metaphor—okay for the romantics and perhaps the Renaissance, but not for the Enlightenment or the age of technology and science.

• Unrealistic or disappointed expectations of God are blocks.

• When we loose sight of love and we cannot find a way of return.

• Theology and dogma can be the greatest blocks: Those who want or need to take absolute positions or argue a particular view about the nature of God probably do not experience union with God.

I want to know -- not intellectually or logically or objectively – I want to know, as in experience, Divine love and union with God.

I care deeply but my heart is not arrested by the social, political, and theological battles that divide the church and an roil in society. I am not bound up with this argument about theology or that struggle over dogma.

I want to know the heart of God,

I want to experience union with the Divine, and

I want to know myself as love,

everything else is potentially dangerous historical curiosity and too often distracting peripheral details.

• Still your mind, rest your eyes, open your heart.

• Now, look at yourself, deeply and quietly. Sense yourself and your heart’s deepest yearning ---- then say to yourself, "nothing less than love will do for me."

• Picture your partner, a child, a friend, someone for whom you greatly care ---- as you picture that person, think to yourself, "nothing less than love will do for you."

• Picture an enemy, or whatever euphemism you use for that harsh word ---- as the person comes into your mind, think to yourself, "nothing less than love will do for you."

• Picture the world, the precious ecosystems, the war-ravaged, the dreamers, the beggars, the oppressed and all the rest ---- when you’ve seen enough, think to yourself, "nothing less than love will do for you."

The pre-eminent 20th century preacher from the Riverside Church in New York, William Sloan Coffin, once said, "Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; ‘Cognito ergo sum’ – ‘I think therefore I am.’ Nonsense. ‘Amo ergo sum’ -- ‘I love therefore I am.’ Or, as with unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, ‘Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.’ I believe that. I believe it is better not to live than not to love."³

Your spiritual homework for the week is to meditate on these things:" Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love."

1. God is love -- Divine love is the unifying, basic life force,
2. Each of us is beloved of God, more radically,
3. You are love - YOUR essential nature IS love, and
4. As love we live our daily lives in conscious union with the Divine.

And, "….nothing less than love will do…."

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¹ The teaching was created from thesenotes and there is no full manuscript.
² If you are reading, please take a few minutes to reflect on the question before reading the cues.
³ William Sloan Coffin, "Credo," pg. 5.