Love is Risky

I don’t know about you, but I feel surrounded by lamentation these days. When we lament together, we are heard, because lament comes from a place of deep pain, and that resonates with people. We lament today for our broken world.  We lament because we believe and hope that the world can change.  The Dalai Lama says, “I have hope for the future, which has not yet been decided.  And we often live as if the future has been decided.”

When I am uncertain in my life, I look to Jesus’ wisdom. Jesus teaches us that change starts with a change of the heart, before it ever happens in our minds or actions.  He exemplifies this “inner work” when he goes into the desert and spends time in prayer. Jesus shows us how to see God in everything and everyone, and what it means to speak from the heart.  And maybe this is what Ezekiel means by a “heart of flesh” versus a heart of stone. 

My own experiences have taught me that we have divinity in our DNA. In fact, a couple of neuroscientists conducted research on people meditating and discovered that during deep meditation, a unique part of the brain is activated, which is not used for other purposes. This makes me ask, “Are we already hardwired to talk to God?”

While I use the word “heart” for the divine, Parker Palmer calls the divine within us “a soul,” and he equates it to a wild animal. Think for a minute what that means. He says the soul  “is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-reliant. It knows how to survive in hard places.” And he also makes the analogy that if you want to see a wild animal, what do you do? You quietly enter the forest, sit under a tree, breathe with the earth, fade into the surroundings, and wait. Then you might get a glimpse of the animal, but you will always treasure this sighting as an end in itself.  It takes stillness and patience to find the divine within us, but it is worth it. 

And that process is what we call “inner work”.  Jesus teaches us to search for the divine within us. Listening quietly for God’s voice.  Whether reading scripture with Lectio Divina or journaling, praying with an icon, walking the Labyrinth, raising your voice in song, or doing any of the other contemplative practices that we heard about last summer, these practices help us to stop, clear the mind, and listen for God’s voice and risk a change of heart. 

When it comes to love, this is where our journey begins, being open to God’s grace, knowing that we are loved just as we are - in our woundedness and brokenness, in our pain. We live in the dichotomy of carrying both the eternal presence of God, along with the fallen way of the Ego.  And as the puppets reminded us at the service last week, we just need to “Let God’s Love Open the Door”.  Or just say YES. 

The Lord’s Prayer gives us a description of the Kingdom of God as a place where everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid. And the question is, “What does it mean for us to live out the Kingdom of God today?”

Jesus exemplifies that God’s love grows when we practice it, and he shows us that love is always a form of service.  Love is costly and love is risky! Letting my heart be changed is risky! Living in the spirit, not the ego, is risky! If I love, then I cannot help but engage in healing the world around me. It is so much easier in this world to live a life where I just look after “me and mine”. But how can I thrive when the world around me is suffering?  Love creates a circle that is wide enough for everyone. Wellness is interrelated and includes all. 

A part of my faithfulness journey is discerning how God is inviting me personally to act with compassion and speak from the heart. Or just ask: what does love look like to me? I know that throughout my life, God has been challenging and inviting me to step out of my comfort zone.  My hope and prayer is that now at the age of 70, I won’t run out of time before I discover who I am meant to be. 

This discernment process will be unique and different for each of us. We each need to explore a connection with God that will grow the best version of ourselves.  We know that beliefs don’t change us; rather, it is the way we choose to be in this world that changes us. 

We ask ourselves what we are willing to risk when we say we love God? Because we have to admit that the world’s ways are completely contrary to Love’s ways. And that hasn’t changed in 2000 years. 

So I invite you to consider a contemplative practice this summer and just be open to the spirit moving in you, because I have found that “sometimes when we hear a truth, it awakens something within us”.  

And I also encourage you to practice radical empathy on this journey, which in Isabel Wilkerson’s words is “putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart and to understand others’ experiences from their perspective not as we imagine we would feel” if we were in their shoes. 

And this is where I stop with my message, because other voices will continue this summer of love journey with you over the weeks ahead. 

May the peace which passes human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in the same Christ Jesus. Amen