Читать книгу Everyday Holiness - Carolyn Humphreys - Страница 10

There is an Eben Holden Christmas story about a little boy who got two shillings from his father for Christmas. He walked to Salem to spend it. While trying to decide what to buy, he saw a tiny girl in a red jacket looking at dolls. She appeared very poor and sickly. She would go up to a doll, put her hand on it and say, “Some day! Some day!” She asked the clerk if she had a doll for three pennies. “No,” said the clerk, “the least for any doll with a dress is a shilling.” It looked as if the little girl was going to cry. “Some day I’m going to have one,” she said. The boy couldn’t stand it any more, so he bought a doll and put it in her arms. The boy never forgot the look that came over her face. Well, she went away and sat down all by herself. Later that night they found her asleep in an alley, half dead with cold, but she had taken off her little red jacket and wrapped it around the doll. “Did she die and go to heaven?” asked a child who was listening to the story. “No, she lived and went to heaven. You’ve crossed the boundary when you begin to love somebody more than you do yourself, even if it isn’t anybody better than a rag doll.”

Taking care of someone, or something, be it a person, pet, garden or a rag doll takes us out of ourselves. Sacrifice is love’s highest expression. Love, a sweet fruit in season at all times, has many manifestations. How do I define love? Today the word “love” is frayed at the edges from overuse. It is associated with so many trivial things. Ernest Holmes presents a broad view on the subject. “Love is the lodestone of life, the great and supreme reality, the highest gift of heaven, the greatest good on earth, the treasure of all our search. While hate kills, love renews and invigorates. As love is the greatest healing power, no one feels whole without it. Love need not be confined to only a few, but can be extended to many without losing the love of a few. In fact, when love becomes more complete it will take in a larger and larger territory and in doing so experience a greater degree of livingness.”

What a wonderful reflection on love. It is worth pondering. Yet something is missing, the source of love: God. We cannot keep going without God. No one can love us like he loves us. His love sustains us, not because we earned it, but because his love is all merciful.

We belong to God. If we really think about this phrase, it is both awesome and comforting. God is the source of the most exquisite form of love known to humankind. To belong to God is to be incorporated into his love which is so much greater than our love. In his treatise on spiritual perfection, Diadochus of Photice wrote:

Anyone who loves God in the depths of his heart has already been loved by God. In fact, the measure of a man’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware he is of God’s love for him. When this awareness is keen it makes whoever possesses it long to be enlightened by the divine light, and this longing is so intense that it seems to penetrate his very bones. He loses all consciousness of himself and is entirely transformed by the love of God. Such a man lives in this life and at the same times does not live in it, for although he still inhabits his body he is constantly leaving it in spirit because of the love that draws him toward God. Once the love of God has released him from self love, the flame of divine love never ceases to burn in his heart and he remains united to God by an irresistible longing.16

If we truly belong to God, we try to adhere to his love in the daily aspects of our lives. The energy that comes from belonging changes us. The love of God means to love what is good. Clare of Assisi explains aspects of love: “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God’s compassionate love for others.” Loving people and things for their own good keeps personal energy, intentions and yearnings within a wide, life-sustaining love for the greater good of humanity. This is far from the narrow use of people and things for selfish gratification. God is not too concerned about the make of my car, the size of my house, the brand names of my clothes, my job title, salary or the number of friends I have on Facebook. He is more concerned about the number of people I gave rides to who did not drive. How I made people feel welcome in my home. How I clothed the poor. What percentage of my salary I gave to the needy or how I helped my distraught friends.

Pure and Simple