Dear Sparrow,

After this rather negative opening statement, I´d better continue with the positive message of Merton´s preface, as this is what it is all about. It may need some meditating though, since we are mostly not used to look at love as he does.

Thus a theology or ethics of punishment and retribution takes the place of the vision of love... The daily reality of our lives is not under the rule of love, but under the rule of law, of force and of punishment...

In this situation it becomes necessary to assert once more that to love is not impossible. Love is not something unreal. On the contrary, love is the only reality. Everything that is, is by virtue of love, and if love is not clearly evident in all things, the reason is that we ourselves have made no effort to see love in all things. In a very radical sense, love is the only and unique possibility. And everything that is not love is essentially and basically impossible.

Ernesto Cardenal is a poet from Nicaragua. His book, "Vida en el Amor", has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in the author´s native Spanish.

Juliana

"Speak Peace in a World of Conflict" (M.B.Rosenberg)

Dear Juliana . . .
I did not see the statement you posted yesterday
as 'negative' . . .
and part of the beauty and peace and grace
that has been opened to me in the past few years
is the discovery and affirmation
that indeed,
love is not what I thought it was . . .
and this new vision and understanding is so freeing . . .
 
There was a time
when it was impossible
for me to twist my mind around the concept
that love is all there is,
but now
I have let go,
and the twisting has stopped.
 
Thank you for sharing this, Juliana.
I have ordered it this morning
from amazon,
and am so looking forward to reading this book
with love . . .
sparrow

everything counts... ♥

@ Dear Betty!
 
the story you told touched my heart
Thank you so much....love, Is.
 
 

If you want to know something about someone, listen to your heart.

@dear sparrow,
 
it is so important, to touch once heart or the other way;
for me its the greatest gift I can get, and ever think,
that I can´t give it ever "back"
 
whenever someone smile on me, whenever someone speak in a good way to me, I am so grateful, because noone knows, he/she did never experience h o w on the other way people can be - that I sometimes must cry - for enjoying this special moments.
 
So it is so easy, to can give it other people...
 
but I know, how it can be, if one has "no reason" to be kind, etc.,..
and often I smile (and my heart is down), just for I do not want to s e e , another person is not lucky, on the street, in the subway, etc...
the most time than THEY make m e smile too - (from my heart)....
 
little gifts I look after, for I do not know, when... and than can remember.
 
much love,
me
 

If you want to know something about someone, listen to your heart.

Dear Isabella . . .
We never know,
do we,
when a smile we give
is a treasure
to the person who receives it from us?
Our gifts to others
are just as important
as the gifts we receive from others . . .
we are all family,
and can recognize this
in the giving and in the receiving
with love . . .
sparrow
     ♥

everything counts... ♥

Dear Sparrow,

Thank you for your response. Well, "negative" wasn´t the word - I would be able to be more accurate in German...

I am glad Merton´s thoughts resonate with you. I have a very good friend who is a Merton scholar, that´s how I became acquainted with his (enormous) work. Also a friend of Merton´s, a Trappist monk, used to live in my small town, working for the SOS Children´s Villages, founded near where I live. He told me much about the time they spent together.

Ernesto Cardenal was a student and friend of Th.M.´s at the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani for some time.

Here´s a little more from the Preface. I am ever so often reminded of the truth of the following; it explains much of the predicament we are in to me.

...as a matter of fact, men do love, whether they know it or not... men can never cease loving... If men live in discord with each other and with God, it is not because they do not love, but because they do not understand and accept the fact that they are bound to love of necessity.
Psychoanalysis has taught us that much hate and fear, and even many physical illnesses, are caused by a love that refuses to acknowledge itself as such, a love that has become ill because it fails to recognize its true nature and has lost sight of its object. The conflicts that beset our world are not caused by the absence of love, but by a love that no longer recognizes itself... Cruelty is misdirected love, and hate is frustrated love.

The lucid and "Franciscan" simplicity of Ernesto Cardenal shows us the world not as we see it, with fear and distrust in our hearts, but as it is in reality. Love is not a dream. It is the basic law of all those ceratures who were created free in order to give themselves to others...

Juliana

"Speak Peace in a World of Conflict" (M.B.Rosenberg)

Julianna, Sparrow, Isabella,
 
I so am loving these lessons you are posting. I do need to contemplate on them and would love to be reading more of his insights if you would like to share them, Julianna.
My first book Thomas Merton's poems left me in laughter for months as I meditated on them. Completely reframed so for me.
 
as a matter of fact, men do love, whether they know it or not... men can never cease loving... If men live in discord with each other and with God, it is not because they do not love, but because they do not understand and accept the fact that they are bound to love of necessity.
 
 
 
Psychoanalysis has taught us that much hate and fear, and even many physical illnesses, are caused by a love that refuses to acknowledge itself as such, a love that has become ill because it fails to recognize its true nature and has lost sight of its object. The conflicts that beset our world are not caused by the absence of love, but by a love that no longer recognizes itself... Cruelty is misdirected love, and hate is frustrated love.
 
Now this so speaks to me....I so agree...
Is there more on the true nature of love?
Reminds me of hate and love walk a thin line from one another.
 
It is sad that we can not and do not accept love as if to choose to fight against such a flowing and magnificant beauty. And Sparrow your words that love is all there is...AHHH.....Isabella such a tender and loving action and much understanding in your heart.
 
Thank you I will be visiting these words to contemplate and meditate with...thank you for the blessings of this wisdom shared.
 
Peace, Love and Joy,
Diane
 
 
 
 
 

Grateful to be here!
What a gift and connection builder!
Love and Gratitude,
Love who You Are

Dear Diane and Sparrow,

I take advantage of my great-nephew (6 1/2) having gone to sleep to post some more of Thomas Merton´s thoughts on Love.

Love is the heart and the true center of that creative dynamism that we call life. Love is life itself in its state of maturity and perfection.

The saints were capable of seeing through the masks that cover the faces of humanity, and they saw that the masks are unreal. In the innumerable faces of men they saw only one face, the face of love (that is to say, the face of Christ)...

Love is. All else is not, because in the same measure in which things partake in being, they partake of love. All that is not love, is not. All that which is, has its being and its action in love.

This may appear very theoretical; whoever has experienced true Love, however, will agree with Thomas Merton, I think.

Love to all of you!
Juliana 

"Speak Peace in a World of Conflict" (M.B.Rosenberg)

Love is the heart and the true center of that creative dynamism that we call life. Love is life itself in its state of maturity and perfection.

 
Today is truly a day for love for me thanks to your posts directing me so fine is this perception and wisdom and I find it eloquence quite aggreable with love being life...life being love...and nothing else exists! Ahhh....soaking up the enrichment and nourishing me so today....All is welll...I can actualize that at last once again! At times it is as if it fades away and yet it never does....if you know what I mean...I find just with starting the day on this thread and its loving affect on me in all I have greeted and commented with today...just so much more fluid on the flow and acknowlegemnet of all these words seem to have transformed me and reminded me of what is always to be remembered. I am so grateful for your time and effort and choices of wisdom shared...please keep it flowing on....So glad he napped for this food for the spirit of life supporting love and love supporting life.
 
Ahhhh.....
"a gift everyday"
    "Presence"
Today the sponge loves life!
Peace, Love and Joy,
Diane
 
PS Sparrow it the twisting just evidence of conditioning of living in the other perceptions...do you think? As if we can at times struggle away or turnn away just in the senses of perceptability...Maybe? Or is just our contemplation of the why's of action in us and/or in us do you think? Is it just hard to grasp this as a truth, simply a truth. And it is so foreign from life conditioning or changes in life expereince? All these questions...sorry!

Grateful to be here!
What a gift and connection builder!
Love and Gratitude,
Love who You Are

I do agree, dear Juliana,
that knowing with the head
and knowing with the heart
are two different things . . .
we use words
to communicate
what is essentially wordless,
and it can appear to be dryer and more theoretical
than it is
as a living thing . . .
 
I think the 'twisting',
Diane,
is intellectual effort
(which makes me tired) . . .
I don't think that this is how real knowledge is attained
or wisdom achieved . . .
and yes,
I do believe that we are conditioned by our environment and culture.
Perhaps the real twisting ocurrs
when we are able to twist ourselves out of the box . . .
and into another way of knowing
with love . . .
sparrow
 

everything counts... ♥

Imenuff


A word of "wisdom" that turned up again today when I was looking for something else. Each of us have our fears that sometimes can seem to overwhelm us. Some years back I had written down a "definition" of FEAR that someone told me. After re-reading it today, it just seems more important to spend my time in the present moment.

F---Fantasy
E---Experienced
A---As
R---Reality

May each of us spend our time being grateful for the present moment rather than sometimes living in fear-filled fantasies about tomorrow.

I was just reading through this thread and I thought this was worth reposting ..
 
Thank you xooxox

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love~and be loved in return♥♥  


 

Where is love gone, if people died?
Do w e feel something untrue?
 
Is it love, if you could stay on someone´s side, with "love" in your heart, with pain he/she has pain, with sympathy something happen, in all parts of life, be fond of everything what could happen, who is ugly, or whatever you want to imagine..
Is it love, to can never really "angry" if the loved person hurt you in any way, if you could forgive everything?
Is love one "thing" you m u s t get back?
Is it love, you have t h i s feeling in your heart, and whatever happen, you will take it with you till your last day...
 
or is it untrue, unreal?
 
So, my important question comes:
Is it the same sort love, what people are feeling, if they are speaking about GOD...?
Do they feel the same, they are feeling if somebody dies - and they are speaking about Jesus death?
Is it the same feeling, the same pain?
Is this love untrue?:
- nobody has seen Jesus, GOD, (other religions...)
 
Can we "allow" other people, to assign which love is r e a l, and which not?
 
Is it the same love, if we love humans, GOD or the nature?
 
Is it normal, to assign love in drawers? Isn´t it a big, big arrogance?
Isn´t it a big arrogance, to define, which feelings somebody has in which intensity - and maybe - to claim, to k n o w which feelings are the "right" and which not?
 
Is it the same, to feel: i don´t like, and: I hate? For me, it cannot be the same...
 
Just questions to think about ... have no answers they are valid for everyone, because I don´t know, h o w   o t h e r  people are feeling...
 
love,
is.
 
 
 
 
 
 

If you want to know something about someone, listen to your heart.

My Dear Isabella ,
 
I can only answer you the way I feel about Love..
 
 

Is it the same sort love, what people are feeling, if they
are speaking about GOD...?

 
For me God is someone who I can't bond with not yet ,so my love for God is not
there and I am unsure if it will ever be not on earth.  
 
 

Do they feel the same, they are feeling if somebody dies - and they are speaking about
Jesus death?

 
 

Only this morning I watched a video of Jesus and his final suffering on earth.
If I am totally honest I felt heart broken for him and his Mother Mary as well.I can't say I love jesus but I do like him .
 
 
So for me seeing Mary suffer the way she did made me love her as I felt her pain and watched it in her eyes..
 
 
I am unsure if I ever loved my own child it's not because I was heartless though.It's just hard 
as  I still feel the love I have for him still  with me so I  am unsure if it was able to go with him on the day he passed on.
 
 

Is it the same feeling, the same pain?

 
No not the same pain I guess for me it's because I did not see my own child die,but I did see Jesus
die many times in films.I felt numb when I was told Louis was dying  yet seeing Jesus die in films I felt broken and still do. 


 

Is this love untrue?:

 
no it's true to me and this is what counts .
 
 

nobody has seen Jesus, GOD, (other religions...)

 
I guess this is called 'faith' and for me this is what I try to grasp..
 

Can we "allow" other people, to assign which love is r e a l, and which not?

 
I do feel other people have an  influence on the way we feel about  love.For me I find love in people and nature but it was me who allowed love into my heart.
 

Is it the same love, if we love humans, GOD or the nature?

 
For some people I know they love God with a passion but for me I love nature with the same passion , but Isabella if I think about it God is in nature so maybe I am just unable to allow that side to sink in right now.
If this is the case then God must be  most precious thing on earth.... 

Is it normal, to assign love in drawers? Isn´t it a big, big arrogance?

 
I am unclear what you mean by this sorry
 

Isn´t it a big arrogance, to define, which feelings somebody has in which
 
intensity - and maybe - to claim, to k n o w which feelings are the "right" and which not?

 
Isabella we all have feelings but sharing them helps no end.I know myself if I 'feel' unworthy  by sharing it with someone close to me I know I am worthy and it was just me being too hard on myself.
Sometimes my feelings are right but sometimes they are wrong .This is life I feel.
 

Is it the same, to feel: i don´t like, and: I hate? For me, it cannot be the same...

 
For me I don't like to use the word hate as I feel 'hate' eats away at me.I don't like many things
somethings I can change but some I have to try so hard to execpt and 'move on'.
 
Sorry now if your questions were different to what I thought they meant.
 
Whatever we feel Isabella it helps so much having people around  who love us.So yes I
feel love and it's a love that will never ever die not ever..
 
Take care Isabella and thank you for this post.
 
Love Sandra xxx 
  
 ~    

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love~and be loved in return♥♥  


 

Dear Isabella,

I´d like to respond to your post and answer your questions from my experience as best I can - but that would have to be in German. Do you mind coming to GGG?

Love,
Juliana

"Speak Peace in a World of Conflict" (M.B.Rosenberg)

Dear, Dear Juliana,
Since you yourself are an English teacher, please, share your answers to Isabella's questions in English
also.  We ALL benefit much from each other's questions and answers.

May you have a blessed new week.

Dear Betty,

Thank you for your request. Since the topic Isabella has raised is a very abstract one, I´d prefer to first read her questions in German and then answer accordingly. A teacher of English, yes, but never completely certain of the emotional content of words. I´d hate to create misunderstandings on such a subtle topic. - It takes me MUCH longer, too, to express what I think in English. Nevertheless I might do so when time allows...

Love,
Juliana

"Speak Peace in a World of Conflict" (M.B.Rosenberg)

Dear Isabella,

Thank you for posting such thought provoking questions for reflection.  I am always amazed at
how well you express yourself in a language that is not your native tongue.  You have given me much to think about as a prepare dinner.  Hopefully, I will have the time to post later this
evening.  You should be so very proud of yourself for how very well you express such complex thoughts in English.  You are a real example to all of us.

Blessings on your weekend.  Will post more later.

For me, Love is Love is Love. There is only Love. Love just 'is'
It's people who put Love into compartments....God's Love, human Love, romantic Love etc.
 
Like Sandra, I don't know if I believe in God, but I do believe in Love, and they say God is Love.
 
Hate is an emotion. Love is the expansive force in all of life. It is creation itself.
 
Fear destroys....Love creates.
 
A word which is very difficult to describe!
 
Jude

Love is the only way

So for me seeing Mary suffer the way she did made me love her as I felt her pain and watched it in her eyes..

 
Dearest Isabella I just re read what I said
 
I did not mean because Mary suffered I love her not at all.What I meant to say was I could
see and feel the love she has for Jesus in her heart and eyes .This is pure love and I love
her for this .I also felt Love for Jesus too as he was kind and gentle too.
 
 

You should be so very proud of yourself for how very well you express such complex thoughts in English. You are a real example to all of us.

 
Betty is right Isabella English is my only language and I forget your not English I would be the first
to admit your English is way better than mine   
But I know you love me regardless
 

There is only Love. Love just 'is'
It's people who put Love into compartments....God's Love, human Love, romantic Love etc.

 
 
 
So often in this world people 'fall out of love' but Jesus never does his love remains  with us always .
 
In my eyes Romantic love is not pure  love how can it be if it can fade away .Yes it's nice and it's what many people
want but for me I am seeing a bigger picture of the meaning of love right now.
 
 Unconditional  love is pure love and we all can feel it if we are open to it.I am getting there
slowly I think  
 
I am learning this daily...
 
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love~and be loved in return♥♥  

 
Jude as your signature says..
 
Love is the only way ..
 
 
 

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love~and be loved in return♥♥  


 

Dear Isabella, Sandra, Jude, and Juliana,
 
We are all talking about love, but what do we mean by this word? Is it the same for all of us?
God is love! Does it mean God is infinitely sellf-giving and all our love is a sharing in this love? Is all our loving an expression of this love? Are we all manifestations of this endless love, this wonderful variety of espressions?
Love is deeper than feelings. To me it is a reaching out, embracing, saying "yes", being connected to everyone and everything.
 
The question then is how does this apply?  Do we feel connected to this love, when everything seems to go wrong, when we lose what and who is most precious to us?
How do we love that annoying neighbor? How do we love those who have done terrible things? The feelings may be very different, but the deepest desire of wanting what is good for them is for me loving them!
 
I have to go now, but the conversation will continue!
 
Much love,
Edda

Peace and joy!