FROM THE BOUNDARY - Love actually – Part three

We’ve been reflecting on love and, in particular, how the overarching precept that God IS love plays out in our lives. I said that if we look at the liturgy of Holy Communion services, at least in the Anglican Church, we won’t find much love in it – though a good deal of ‘sorry’, ‘mercy’, ‘judging’, ‘unworthiness’ and the like.

Well, last Sunday as usual I attended St Matthew’s Church at Borth, my home in Wales. I’ve mentioned the house-for-duty priest there before. He’s a man of vast experience, a wonderful preacher in the evangelical tradition. In his homily, in a throwaway line, he spoke of our consciousness of our ‘guilt’. I blinked. For good or ill, sorry I don’t have it.

Of course, like everyone else I do silly things and make the most horrendous mistakes. So, yes, like the rest of us I’m a sinner. For the most part, I’m aware of it; and just as I say ‘Thank you Lord’ when things go well, so also I say ‘Sorry Lord’ when I’m an idiot and routinely confess it all on Sundays. But in that, I speak to the divine ‘as a man speaks to his friend’ – honestly, respectfully and lovingly. I certainly don’t feel that I’m marked for life by a lump of guilt on my shoulders or carried-over sin in my genetic make-up.

Actually, after the service I asked a friend over the customary coffee and biscuits how his sense of guilt was today. He clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

So: I refuse to accept myself as spiritually ugly and deformed, and thus reject the idea that in my ordinary dealings of smiles, laughter and joy, as well as in my tears and heartaches, I’m wearing a disguise to hide the rottenness inside me. And I absolutely refuse to live a distorted image of myself because some ‘God-fearing’ folk tell me that that’s what I really am.
I don’t believe for a moment that we’re ‘made’ sacred. I think we were born that way. I believe that God is within us and speaks to and from us in all His wisdom, creativity and love. And it follows that love is ever at the core of our being, deeper far than all our silliness, fear and hatred. Our hearts proclaim it, and our oneness with each other and all creation.

That’s the true Garden in which we move, despite all the attempts to make us forget it or insist that we’re not worthy of it.

It follows that a baptism, like a blessing, is not a magic wand. It doesn’t in itself transform us. It’s more a prompting from the wings, a reminder, feeding the Holy Spirit inside us. Like our tears, it’s an icon or window through which love and understanding become realities in our lives. So, yes, it’s time to wake up and chuck the sleeping pills we’ve been fed for so long. It’s time to tear from our wrists the shackles in which the Church has kept us bound. With love, there are no straightjackets. Our legacy is love, not fear and ignorance.

You see, that’s the Good News which Jesus brought us to wake us up, to release us from the bondage we’ve customarily been taught – respect for power, authority, obedience, all those ‘thou shalt nots’ and the other commands and penalties which accompany it – so that we’ll see what now we don’t see, and become blind to the way we’ve been taught to see ourselves, and thus learn the truth about ourselves. Jesus crumples the crudeness of man-made images. He tells us what we don’t know or have been brainwashed to forget. He’s our ‘showing’, you see, the God within us made manifest so that we flower as we truly are, no longer living down to what we’ve been told we are.

All the stupid things we do are no more than infections, sometimes life threatening, yes, if we don’t acknowledge them as they are. But through Jesus, in the perfect image of love, we’re restored – not with a new face but by uncovering our originality, by treating our spiritual sicknesses, which seek to destroy everything that’s good and true and beautiful about us, through the memory of Him in our hearts. It’s a memory which carries us from the Lethe of forgetfulness, no matter the malignancy and depth of its waters, to the arms of rebirth, wholeness and love. We can call it the spirit of man and it’s at the deep heart’s core. Equally, call it the love of God, the divine within us.

Well, in last week’s column I ended with a pearl of wisdom from the Dalai Lama. It came from ‘The Book of Joy’ by His Holiness and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which my wife gave me for Christmas. You remember? “Wherever you have friends, that’s your country. Wherever you receive love, that’s your home.” It’s a wonderful insight, isn’t it? It compels me to say that Barbados is also my home. For here, as I’ve said before, there are those, older than me, who have been as fathers to me in all the ups and downs of life – and I will never forget them or cease to love them.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

More Tibetan wisdom from the boundary: “Whoever gives you love, that’s your parent” (the Dalai Lama).