love

I had begun to believe that no one would ever love me again

My dear, for the last ten years Arletta has been coming to see me every Thursday, and when he can't come, he stops in to tell me. We're old friends. I think he likes to talk with me. Do you know, when he found me, I couldn't even walk? Some of my toenaíls were at least three inches long. He came back with fríends. They heated water, cut my toenalls, and rubbed my feet. Look, over there is the basin, all polished and shiny. Do you know hím very well? I wonder what he sees in me. I had begun to believe that no one would ever love me again.

Love, the root of life

Pure Love is seeking desire, searching through space, through the air, through the ground, seeking fulfillment. On and on it goes until at last awakening in Itself, It finds Its foundation in the heart... God's Love is the One Flood that never recedes, but rises, rises, covering the universe, covering every living atom. The lowest and highest join in one overwhelming desire to give all to Divine Love: Love fulfilling, feeding', giving, opening in every direction — giving without beginning or end; Love, the root of Life.

When someone has compassion on us

When someone has compassion on us, we find ourselves really seen, heard, attended to. If someone's attention is genuinely compassionate, it does not stop at attentiveness: he or she is willing to speak, act, or even suffer with us and for us. It is in such passivity, as we receive their compassion, that the most powerful dynamics of our own feeling and activity are shaped. Amazed gratitude for such compassion can last a lifetime.

To affirm and sustain the seed in another human being

This is one of the things that love is called upon to do:

To affirm and sustain the seed in another human being even though no tangible evidence has been given of the nature and quality of the seed that is growing there. Love depends upon the capacity to reach beneath the surface of persons, to feel and touch the seed of life that is hidden there. And love becomes a power when it is capable of evoking that seed and drawing it forth from its hiding place.

February 2000 (Vol. XIII, No. 2)

May BLESSINGS OF RADICAL LOVE be yours, dear friends. As we learn to abide in Love, our sharing within ourselves and with others will become deepening communion with the Source of all Love. In the Silene we open our hearts to Love.

Alan W. Jones Journey Into Christ

When silence, wonder, adoration are diminished, so are human beings. We imagine we can get by on love and indeed we can. But love shrivels up and dies in the absence of contemplation and adoration. Love, human love, needs to be transfigured, transcended, if it is to be true to its deepest self.

Tilden Edwards

Prayer is opening into Love; into that radiant and centerless Love surpassing our understanding and enfolding all of life.

Thomas Keating The Joyous Impulse

There came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. ~ I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence ~ that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all: That the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love.

Katherine Neville Magic Circle

"Love isn't something you want to DO with someone."

"I'm not at all sure I know what love is," I said meaning it.

"I think love is when you know that a part of you IS the person you love, and a part of him or her is inside of YOU. You can't use or manipulate or deceive someone you truly love, because you'd be using or manipulating or lying to yourself. Does that make sense?"

Henry Drummond

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.

Mahatma Gandhi

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of humankind.

Renate Craine Hildegard

The entire universe, the cosmos, manifests the mystery of the fiery, ever-living Light of Love that shines forth in and through matter, in and through human beings in their specific historical setting. God, as the mystery of Love, is like the horizon that surrounds the human spirit, wooing it into creative tension between body and soul, mind and emotion, individual and community, heaven and earth. Willingness to live in the tension of these poles is the womb that nourishes and protects those discerning actions that will mirror the fiery, life-giving love that is God.

Anselm Gruen Angels of Grace

All that we love mirrors who we are. To be so imbued with love that we reflect it back with our whole being is a fundamental human longing ~ not only to love another man or woman, but actually to become love. When you become love you love everything around you. You greet every human being with love and draw love out of them. ~ You feel you are loved by God, so that God's love streams through you. Everything you do is marked by this love. You do your work for love ~ You do not have to create love in yourself. You have only to drink at the spring of divine love, which is bubbling up in you and is always enough.

Gregg Braden

Compassion is an awareness that you become, rather than something that you do on occasion.

Gerald Jampolsky Out of Darkness into the Light

When we adhere to the belief system of love, and have thoughts only of God, we begin to understand why our true identities are ultimately found in our love rather than in our bodies. We are each the essence of love. Peace and happiness are at the center of the heart of love. There is a complete absence of fear and guilt, and there is diminishing pain and misery; there are only loving and forgiving thoughts. Within this belief system, love and life are eternal.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

The divine love of God teaches us that fruitfulness is more important than success, that love of God is more important than the praise of people, that community is more important than individualism, and compassion is more important than competition.

Anonymous

May the love you are shine brightly;
May love bless you and all you meet!

William Johnston Being in Love

Through contemplation you become a fountain that pours forth loving waters in all directions. Anyone who comes within the radius of that fountain -- old or young, rich or poor, man or woman, saint or sinner, friend or enemy -- gets splashed by love.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine Embracing the Beloved

The experience of the enormity we falteringly label "divine" is unconditional love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion ~ the sense of presence, of simply being, when investigated brings one toward the experience of the Beloved. At times the heart bursts into flame, the mind kind and clear. But usually it is just a simple spaciousness and ease that lets thoughts float in mercy and awareness and recognizes the evolutionary struggle in everyone they meet.

Charlotte Sophia Kasl

Love is the energy at the center of all life, the reality beneath our fears, the breath within the breath, the seed of all that grows. Loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all is interconnected and sacred. For most people, the journey toward love requires that we penetrate the armor around our hearts, feel our grief, and open ourselves to all our feelings. In doing so we become less and less dependent on others to validate our worth.

M. Basil Pennington Centered Living

God hears only the beating of human hearts and what rests within them. It is the compassion that comes out of the experience of oneness and holds the world in infinitely tender love that speaks efficaciously to Divine Creation Love and alters the course of history. It is not some beautiful thought or insightful idea, but being with the groanings of the earth and all its peoples that makes our prayer. It is only our living out of the Center of unity and oneness that make a difference in the redeeming of the earth.

Carolyn Gratton The Art of Spiritual Guidance

Unless we are grounded in Mystery -- unless we experience both ourselves and others as co-participants in Mystery -- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time. Unless we have "new eyes" that can see others contemplatively, it is easy to miss the many-spendored thing that is our life together.

The belief system of love

When we adhere to the belief system of love, and have thoughts only of God, we begin to understand why our true identities are ultimately found in our love rather than in our bodies. We are each the essence of love. Peace and happiness are at the center of the heart of love. There is a complete absence of fear and guilt, and there is diminishing pain and misery; there are only loving and forgiving thoughts. Within this belief system, love and life are eternal.

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