Pineridge Blog

The last few years I have been on a spiritual journey, which began with the realization a few years ago that we are not called first to love God, but we are first simply loved by God. Because we first know God’s love for us, we respond by loving God and others. Jesus says that is the “Greatest Law” (Matt 22). It is like the law of physics that holds the universe togeth-er; “God is love” (1 John 4).

It is not about “believing” in this love or even “knowing” this love to be true, although those are good things. But it is trusting this love enough so that we risk loving others. This love is not a noun but a verb.

It is a strange concept, I know, but God loves us with the same love with which we love God and others. As we love, God is loving through us. Meister Eckhart the German monk and phi-losopher said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” The heart/mind/soul through which I love God is the same heart/mind/soul through which God loves me. This makes absolutely no sense to us as an idea, but when we love generously we experience this love, and it makes sense of us. In giving ourselves away in acts of generosity God loves us through our own love!

In these difficult days of dealing with hard questions and hard conversations around racial issues this is the only productive and truly hopeful place I know to start. The hope for white people who are struggling even to see if not fully own privilege it is important for us to realize that God’s love is stronger than the hurt we have caused. People of color have long drawn from the deep wells of hope that God’s love is stronger than any suffering, which must be endured.

The place where any kind of meaningful conversation begins is the point at which we each can find the source of God’s un-ending love flowing from our center and see that same love at the center of the other.