Loving

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 beautifully and accessibly with the image of a mother or father holding the newborn for the first time and losing themselves in the beauty of the child’s face, tiny fingers, beating heart, soft skull. When I held my newborn daughter for the first time, when we looked into each other’s eyes, I will never forget the surprising and engulfing feeling of in-loveness that I felt for her.  How unexpected the love for this tiny being I had just seen for the first time! Not something I could have understood before it overcame me. Completely lost to myself in that moment, merged with her, I was hers and she was mine. This kind love which overtakes us and in which we pour ourselves into, Finley teaches, is like the love of God. 

These moments of “being taken by God” that come unbidden can occur in many different situations.  At the bedside of a dying beloved, the sunset at the end of the day, a garden coming into bloom, the armor of the heart is loosed, and we enter into an experience of oneness with something greater than our small sense of self.  

More recently, I have been drawn into the love of God teaching yoga to the residents at a local nursing home. Rushing to get there on time, pressed down by the weight of all the worries that accumulate during the average Monday, I sit down with my students and start to take them in.  The students are different every time some returning, some new. I start to slow way down to the pace of their lives pushed in wheelchairs or steadied by walkers down the hall, five or six sitting quietly together waiting for class to start.  Slowing down, the worries clamoring for attention start to dissolve, I come into my body. My heart starts to break open with awe at the awesome challenges that they face every day, the vulnerability with which they walk through life in this moment. “May I be an oasis for you today,” my prayer from the Hafiz poem as we reach our arms into the air, stretch them out like wings, spread our fingers wide.  Some come in with no legs, arms that can no longer straighten, minds that are disconnected from the body.  But all are participating in their own way, with curiosity, wonder, gratitude. My heart more tender now, I find that place deep down where we are all connected, in the flow of God’s love.  It comes out to me through reaching arms, widening eyes, slowing breaths and flows back through the rhythm of my voice, my movements. Thomas Keating has said that the cries of the suffering are God’s cries.  When we reach out to hear and touch these cries, when we are with each other in tender caring ways, this is how we love the God who longs for our love.  This is how we can feel the inner wellspring of God’s love filling us back up again.