On The Cosmic We podcast, Richard Rohr explores on how opening ourselves to the flow of God’s unconditional love allows us to pass it on:
We’ve failed to communicate the unique nature of divine love. Divine love is infinite, but the notion of infinity cannot be conceived by the human mind. We can’t help but turn back to adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, one of my favorite Catholic mystics, shares, “There is a science about which [God] knows nothing—addition!” [1] What she was trying to say was that once we dive into infinity, which is God, any notion of adding, subtracting, meriting, losing, being worthy, is all a waste of time. God’s love is infinite, a concept the human mind cannot form. The divine notion of perfection isn’t the exclusion of imperfection, but the inclusion of imperfection. That’s divine love.
Human love thinks we have to exclude imperfection to love a person. But I’m old enough to know there’s no perfect people around. They don’t exist. We’ve all learned to keep hidden our little secret or shadow self. But divine love includes imperfection, which is what makes it divine love. Without the grace of God, we cannot do that. We pay attention to the imperfection: “I saw him do that. I heard her say that.” Then we have identified our reason not to love and we can feel superior and even “damn” the other person. That’s what I mean when I say Jesus became a scapegoat because he knew that the human pattern of scapegoating always makes someone else the problem instead of ourselves. Christianity is not about changing other people—it isn’t! It’s nice if people do change, but that’s God’s work. It’s about changing ourselves, and that never stops. I’m 80 years old and I’m still trying to change myself.
In one of his letters, Paul says, “The yes is always found in Christ,” the yes to reality (see 2 Corinthians 1:20). We are living in love if we can maintain a daily yes. That doesn’t mean we don’t recognize injustice and stand against it, but we don’t let our hearts become hardened and our minds become rigid in its judgments. Love is always a yes. Even though we might see little or big problems, we don’t let it stop the yes. I find in my old age that I’ve eventually had to forgive everything. Everything! Myself, my parents, the Catholic Church, the United States of America.
Once we stop expecting, needing, or demanding that something or someone be perfect, we’re much happier. We’re doing ourselves and the world a favor. It’s not easy to do apart from the life and grace of God flowing through us. That’s why, for me, the notion of God as Trinity, the flow of relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is so important. Without that daily flow, we get trapped in the negatives. We all do. We all will, unless we tap into the love of God flowing through us.
References:
[1] Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux: The Little Flower of Jesus, ed. T. N. Taylor (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1924), 241. This early translation of Thérèse’s autobiography includes the chapter “Counsels and Reminiscences,” which is not part of other editions.
Adapted from “Reimagining Notions of Love with Fr. Richard Rohr,” The Cosmic We, season 3, ep. 2 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2022), podcast. Available as MP3 audio download and PDF transcript.
Image credit and inspiration: Aaron Burden, Untitled (detail), 2016, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. When will this water drop? We don’t know what will happen but Love is with us regardless.
Story from Our Community:
The words radical resilience remind me of the profound determination I have had to tap into in order to be still and to move forward. After recently leaving an abusive marriage, I find myself discovering hidden treasures within my healing, strengthening, stretching soul. There have been so many moments when I’ve declared, “I’m done,” but now I feel the grace, love and acceptance that eluded me for so long. Listening to “Turning to The Mystics” the other day, Jim said, “God meets you exactly where you are.” His words brought me to tears…. [There is] a renewed light allowing me to see more clearly the inspired Source within my soul. I see my life now as a rebellious act of radical resilience.
—Nancy P.
