“Always an opportunity to love”

H,

The years do add on this extra texture of hate and desperation. We are not wiser by trauma but more bitter, full of untouched rage and waiting for an opportunity to strike back while always thinking we are healing. This realization that we are going the wrong way is not in itself fatal to anything real, it is merely an opportunity to love.

We love first because we are loved. Simplistic but absolutely true. We do not have the tools to delve back into our own darkness and find the healing we need to live in the light. We have to experience something of that old weight of glory, the idea that we are more than flesh and bone and incidents that scar us. The very true revelation that we have inherent value, that we are creatures of purpose and that within every life is a fantastic story that will make full sense in the end.

It does not make sense now. We would be lying to ourselves if we said it did. All of present life is tainted with the dark. We see tragedies beyond description and live in situations that have no tinge of romance or levity and sometimes, seemingly, no trace of a benevolent creator. All sense of goodness we have is in the hope and faith right there in the love of God. There is no easy way to describe it: it is like the best story about us is suddenly and clearly true and we are living in it. This is what the love of God feels like.

And in that great repair, lies the great wave of being able to be honest, to be true, and to love others. But let us not hurry along to solutions we do not yet have. It is enough to learn this slowly. We are edging into eternity, becoming out real and final selves. We will have many opportunities to show love. Let us take the one we have right now to experience and grow and become that character that lights up the whole universe.