Spread the love 💗 A special new arrival

Our new little bundle of joy, our grandson August (Gus) Matthew Toews has reminded us all how powerful and incredible love is. As soon as he entered the world, this charming magnet for affection started blessing everyone with his peaceful presence, his little squeaks, hiccoughs and wriggles, and his needy cry. He needs our love and attention to thrive and survive and we're so happy to give it to him.

After many heartbreaking losses, joy has finally arrived in the form of this adorable baby boy! Gus was born to my daughter after she suffered through six miscarriages. During her pregnancy with Gus after each passing day, month, and trimester we breathed a sigh of sheer relief.  Along with my daughter Becca, my wife Kathleen's tears turned from sadness into utter elation when Gus entered this world safely. We could not be more blessed than to have such a special addition join us all!

Rest in love (Radical prayer)

Somehow I want to transition from our love for Gus to learning to become more loving and I can't come up with a smooth way to do that so please forgive me as I dive right in...

We all need to be loved and to give love away. Gus and his long suffering parents are inspiring me to contemplate love once again.

One time I prayerfully imagined that I was grovelling in shame before Jesus on the cross. Who the heck knows why I was doing this. My groveling was misguided and rooted in guilt and shame, for sure. In spite of that the next thing I knew it became a  vision and  Jesus was standing next to me and comforting me. I didn’t hear him say anything, but I knew that I didn’t need to grovel. The guilt and shame that I was feeling disappeared in an instant. Still, for some reason I wanted to wiggle away, knowing the whole time that the best thing for me was to stay put and rest in the love and acceptance I was feeling.

Mary Oliver in her poem 'Wild Geese' says,

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

A gift to give away

For me the experience of Jesus standing next to me and comforting me was a gift that I didn’t even know I needed. I return to this experience often, or it just pops up in my imagination without me trying to imagine it. In Christian circles like contemplative exercises and listening prayer we will sometimes invite people to pray and use their imagination and picture Jesus showing up for them in a situation they are struggling with. I find that when Jesus shows up using imaginative prayer like this for myself and others it’s often in unexpected life-giving ways just as he did for me.

For several years now, I have practiced praying for others using this scene; imagining Jesus standing at the side of friend or family member, or even taking it a little further by imaging Jesus holding them like a loving parent holds their child, or how we've been holding Gus! (Tear - man I love that kid!)

The mystics and the saints

The mystics and the Saints, they all go here; to this place of tender, divine unconditional love, and with all their pointing they are simply saying, be open to love. A perfect example of this is written about by Brother Joe Schmidt who describes St. Thérèse of Lisieux's (1873 - 1897) methods as “the way of being aware of your need for love, willing to give yourself to God’s loving embrace like a child abandons itself with confidence and love into the arms of its loving parent, and then freely sharing love with others in creative good works of peace and justice. It is the willingness to be the person God calls you to be.” [1]

This quote describes perfectly what I am trying to say, and St. Thérèse and her “little way” are simply amazing as her teaching and example keeps blessing, guiding and pointing us toward divine love 126 years later.

Held

I’m walking and dictating some of this post this morning. It’s 8°C. The sun is shining. A bald eagle (photo above) is majestically soaring above me. I had some nice conversations with some of my trail buddies and I am feeling what I’m talking about here; I feel held by divine love. If you know me, this feeling of love and connection isn't unusual for me when I'm out in nature.

Additionally, I think the invitation for me this morning is to NOT hold onto to experiences of love, and to share them with others in whatever way I can. So, here you go!

Give it away (More radical prayer)

There’s no storehouse in our souls for divine, unconditional love. It’s meant to be received and then given away. To flow through us. If you sense it, or feel it, go ahead and receive it and in your next prayerful breath give it away even if it’s through your imagination.

You don’t have to cling or hoard feelings of divine love. There is an eternal flow of divine love. You’ll never run out of love to give. In another picture I had as I was praying I felt led to look down a well. I had the thought that it was a well from which love could be drawn from and I had a deep sense (pun intended 😊) that there was no end to the supply of unconditional love. I could draw from it, and draw from it forever, and the well would never run dry.

Also, as I said above what was being pulled from the well was unconditional love. There wasn’t anything this love couldn’t be applied to. As I used my imagination to draw from the well and apply it’s waters to the thoughts of separation and failure I was having at the time, I would ask: Can it be applied to that? Yes even that. Can it be applied to this? Yes even this.

Unlimited, unconditional love.

An impossible standard

Being loving all the time is an impossible standard and that’s okay! Loving your enemies: how difficult and nearly impossible is that? It's helpful to be reminded that we are powerless to love a lot of the time and to get in touch with divine love when we miss the mark or feel like we don't have any love to give. As the 12 Steps has been teaching us for 85+ years, being a loving person and overcoming our defects of character can’t be accomplished through willpower alone. We need the help of a Higher Power and the help of others in our community. See “We Learn by Getting it Wrong” by Richard Rohr.

We have to cooperate with the divine if we are going to become more loving especially in circumstances that are difficult and with people who are difficult to love.

We need to keep abiding in love and drawing from the well I described above probably for the rest of our lives until judgment fades away and we love because we are love and nothing can stop us of from responding in love.

May we receive and share the love our family, friends, and the world so desperately needs. And may we learn to draw water from the well of unconditional love that never runs dry.

Welcome to the world Gus and thank you for being a spark and divine catalyst to love. I love you so much I could burst. I can’t wait to do life with you and your amazing parents.

Quote:

“The genius of Twelve Step programs is that they situate powerlessness and surrender right where they belong —at the beginning. They teach how sin or addiction are overcome not through willpower or by control, but much more by recognizing that we are powerless to overcome them. 

For example, we don’t become charitable by willpower, by saying to ourselves, “Be charitable!” Rather, we recognize the moments when we were totally uncharitable, and we weep over them. That doesn’t feel like power at all, does it? No one wants to go there.” ~ Richard Rohr

Notes:

[1] Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC, Everything Is Grace: The Life and Way of Thérèse of Lisieux (The Word Among Us Press: 2007), 21.

[2] Richard Rohr - https://cac.org/daily-meditations/we-learn-by-doing-it-wrong-2023-03-27/ 

Photos: Rod Janz