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Loving

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When asked by his followers “Rabbi, what are the most important commandments?” Jesus responded, “The first is to love God with all your heart and the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Other commandments are built upon these.” What does it mean to love God?  What exactly are we loving?  And with what kind of love? The mystics who believe in an ‘in-dwelling’ God, would say that we love God when we are merged with the in-dwelling God.  This is not unlike the “yoking of the consciousness with the Divine” that we find in yoga philosophy. In this yoking, the small self that we measure by our status in things like wealth, power, praise and the adoration of others, falls away as we feel ourselves beyond measure in our unity with the infinity of God, mystery, Divine life itself.  There is in this merging the feeling of love flowing two ways, towards the presence that holds us and back towards us in return.  James Finley describes this beautifull...
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Courage and Faith

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Mothers & Daughters

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When my daughter was a baby, I thought I understood what it meant to be a mother.  It was clear that my purpose was to keep her safe and supported and growing in curiosity, strength, and resilience.  The loving had a clarity and reciprocity that was overflowing. But, as she was constantly changing and needed different things from me, how to do these things of mothering and what it meant to be a mother kept changing.  It wasn't always easy to know what she needed from me or didn't need any longer or what loving meant across the divide of adolescence.   I have sweet memories of my beautiful mother as a young woman and how she cared for me as a child.  I have a sense of her always in the background keeping the family fed, the house clean, bringing in money from her job at the bank. She was a loyal wife, daughter, and friend.  She never imposed herself onto others but went along to make things easier for everyone else and tried to keep the peace.  We ...
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