Lectio
“Compassionate love levels the playing field. Tender-hearted compassion lays bare the preciousness of ourself in our fragility. The very thing we’re so afraid to let anybody see, including ourself, is the very thing, deeply seen and deeply accepted, that sets us free from fear.”
— James Finley, Stories of Thomas Merton
Meditatio
I want to write about love — about all the ways that Love has touched me, moved me, and transformed me. But that would only be half the story. For if it were not for my brokenness — my pain, my suffering, and my sins — Love may not have ever found me. Because Love found me in the very brokenness that separated me from Love. And it was this very Love, in that very brokenness, that opened me up to the Love that healed my brokenness.
What’s more, as it turns out, the Love that found me in my brokenness and healed me through my brokenness also sustained me through the very brokenness that separated me from that same Love. Although I was separated from Love, Love was never separated from me.
Because it was Love that formed me in Love, that sustains me in Love, and calls me to return to Love — for Love’s sake. The I who exists apart from Love cannot actually live without Love, for it is Love itself that makes possible the same I who believes itself to exist apart from the very Love that makes I me. And I am nothing — absolutely nothing — outside of and apart from this Love that loved me before it formed me, that sustains me even in my denial, rejection, and rebellion, and that calls me to itself in and through the broken places within which I hide.
I hide in shame and fear that the Love that never stops loving me will see who I really am and will turn away from me in disgust. But who I really am is the image and likeness of this very Love — disguised as brokenness to hide from the reflection of Love I see when I look beyond my self-made image to the image of Love that lies hidden beneath the façade of pride, fear, and shame.
The very same Love I am reluctant to see in me is the Love that calls me to look. And the same Love I am reluctant to see in me is the same Love I am reticent to see in you — or am envious of when I do — but in moments of graced clarity, the Love in me sees that you are Love, too.
And though we do our best to pretend that we cannot see, that we cannot feel, and that we cannot be love and loved and loving, Love remains. Incarnated, crucified, and resurrected — Love abides. In and as the very essence of our broken wholeness. Unfolding in all that is, as perfect, wounded Love.
Oratio
Taken Everything
love —
you have taken everything from me
and given me infinitely more in return
your sweet taste leaves me longing
for you, still present, still near
your absence a bitterness i cannot wash off my tongue
love —
you have left me speechless
breathless
with no place to rest
except in your memory
falling
floating
without a foothold
no place to land
clinging to you
love —
nothing else matters
i would give up everything
again and again
for another moment
with you
but you come and go
on your terms
not mine
you have never left
Contemplatio
Where in your own brokenness have you glimpsed — however briefly — the Love that never left, like the wounds of the resurrected Christ?
Related Scripture
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
— 1 John 4:18 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like What Are You Going Through?, which reflects on James Finley’s insight that love is always offered and never imposed — and on what it means to be truly seen and asked what we need, as Bartimaeus was by Christ.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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