How often do we question God, "How deep is Your love for me?"
And God replies to us, "How deep is My Love for you? First of all, I created you. I fashioned you in My own Image in complete love because I wanted you, with all your unique qualities, in My Life and in My universe. You are both human and divine, because you carry my Divine Image and I live within you, united to your soul. I created you to be immortal, to live for eternity. I sent My Son to personally tell you that I want you to call me Father, or Mother, because that is how tender My care is for you. You can do nothing to drive Me away from you - I am always faithful. But you sever yourself from Me when you believe the false illusion of separateness. I did not create you to live apart, as either an individual or as a part of a group. I created you to be a part of Me and a part of everyone and everything else that I have created. I created you for Unity."
God is telling us that every relationship is a two-way relationship: your love for me, and my love for you. But, with God, the two-way relationship is more complex. God asks us not only to love God, but to find and to love God IN everyone and everything God has created.
"How deep is your love?" is also the question God asks each of us moment by moment: "How deep is your love for Me? How deep is your love for Me, and for all of My creation? How far are you willing to travel out of your comfort zone to find Me and to love Me?"
Sin is living in the illusion of separateness. Sin is believing that we exist only for ourselves or for our own tight little group. Sin is believing and acting as if we, or we and our group, can live unconnected from the rest of reality.
Sin is not accepting that we are interconnected with not only God but also interconnected with the rest of reality: human beings, the earth, animals, birds, insects, sea creatures, stars, and planets. In fact, scientists teach us that the whole universe is interconnected, so if we believe that we can "go it alone," we're living not only in moral error, but in scientific error.
Sin is choosing to believe that we can choose whom or what to love or to hate, often depending on how "different" someone or something is from us. We human beings are so self-absorbed! It is easiest for us to love and feel close to people who look like us, talk our language, think like us, even worship like us.
Yet the Universe, which God created and which reveals the Presence of God, even embodies God, is filled with such an immense variety and diversity of life forms, that God is obviously a God Who thrives on creativity and diversity. How can we reject anyone or anything which God has created and which God "inhabits"? God is constantly calling to us - "How deep is your love for Me, and for all of My creation? How far are you willing to travel out of your comfort zone to find Me and to love Me?"
Fr. Richard Rohr tells us,
"St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) stated, 'The immense diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represents God than any one creature alone or by itself.' However, most Christians thought humans were the only creatures that God cared about, and all else—animals, plants, light, water, soil, minerals—was just 'food' for our own sustenance and enjoyment. I do not believe that the Infinitely Loving Source we call God could be so stingy and withholding, and only care about one species--unless that care would lead to care for everything else too, which I would call full consciousness. That is the unique human gift.
"God created millions of creatures for millions of years before Homo sapiens came along. Many of these beings are too tiny for us to see or have yet to be discovered; some have seemingly no benefit to human life; and many, like the dinosaurs, lived and died long before we did. Why did they even exist? A number of the Psalms say that creation exists simply to reflect and give glory to God (e.g., Psalm 104). The deepest meaning of creation and creatures is their naked existence itself. God has chosen to communicate God’s very Self in multitudinous and diverse shapes of beauty, love, truth, and goodness, each of which manifests another facet of the Divine. (See Job 38-39, Wisdom 13:1-9, Romans 1:20.) Once you can see this, you live in an enchanted and spiritually safe world.
"Christians have gotten ourselves into a muddle by not taking incarnation and creation as the body of God seriously. As theologian Sallie McFague writes, 'Salvation is the direction of creation, and creation is the place of salvation.' All is God’s place, which is our place, which is the only and every place."
How deep is your love for God and all of God's creation? Scripture tells us that the Body of Christ encompasses the redeemed Universe - how seriously do we take the truth that all of creation, not just humankind, is the Body of God? If our love was that deep, wouldn't we care intensely about having and implementing Laws that protect and purify our air, our water, our soil? If our love was that deep, wouldn't we intensely care about Climate Change?
On August 31, 2017, Charlotte Edmond wrote about Pope Francis for "The World Economic Forum":
"Here are five of the Pope’s memorable quotes about the importance of looking after the planet.
1. Ahead of his encyclical in 2015 he tweeted “The Earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth”
2. At the conclusion of a Vatican summit on the environment in 2015: “Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its decisive mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity. In this core moral space, the world’s religions play a very vital role.”
3. Writing to the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott ahead of the country hosting the G20 in 2015: "There are constant assaults on the natural environment, the result of unbridled consumerism, and this will have serious consequences for the world economy."
4. Speaking on 1st September last year: “We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behaviour. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence. We have no such right.”
5. Tweeting in June this year shortly after the US withdrew from the Paris climate accord: “We must never forget that the natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.”
How deep is your love for God and all of God's creation? Are you affected by that false illusion of separateness that tells you that God prefers whites to people of color? That God loves Christians more than God loves people of other faiths? Let Pope Francis speak to your heart:
"Pope Francis came down hard on intolerance while speaking to a group from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Rome in October 2013. He highlighted the center’s goal 'to combat every form of racism, intolerance and anti-Semitism' and noted that he’d recently reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s condemnation of anti-Semitism.
“'Today I wish to emphasize that the problem of intolerance must be confronted in all its forms: wherever any minority is persecuted and marginalized because of its religious convictions or ethnic identity, the wellbeing of society as a whole is endangered and each one of us must feel affected,' he said.
...."While discussing tensions between Catholics and Muslims in January 2015, Pope Francis once again emphasized the need to accept differences. He told a delegation affiliated with the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamist Studies that 'patience and humility' are musts in the Islamic-Christian dialogue to avoid fueling 'stereotypes and preconceptions.'
“'The most effective antidote to every form of violence is education about discovering and accepting difference as richness and fertileness,” Francis said.
As his other remarks on diversity indicate, accepting difference can apply to religious faith, ethnicity, race and much more. The lesson to be learned, according to the pope, is that people don’t divide themselves and lash out against others based on difference.'" (ThoughtCo)
Are you affected by that false illusion of separateness that tells you that God only loves people with a straight sexual orientation? Pope Francis has said,
"A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? We must always consider the person....because before all else comes the individual person, in his wholeness and dignity.... And people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies: let us not forget that God loves all his creatures and we are destined to receive his infinite love.'”
How deep is your love? Can you love God with a whole, softened heart, open to compassion and mercy? Are you willing to look for God beyond your comfort zone? Can you always choose love, not hate?
Can you find God's Presence in the rich moist soil beneath your feet, in the leaf of a plant, in the eyes of a faithful dog? Can you reject Trophy Hunting as the unnecessary killing of an animal with innate dignity?
Can you find God in someone of a different skin color, a different religious faith - or no faith at all? Can you accept that you don't have to belong to a particular faith to inherit eternal life?
Can you find God in a person using Food Stamps, or a person on Welfare or Medicaid, or the homeless? Can you reject the evil falsehood that everyone needing public assistance is a con artist or lazy or worse? Can you reject the false sense of separateness that tells you that the homeless are "beneath" your care or your notice?
Can you find God in an illegal alien, or a refugee who only speaks Spanish? Can you reject the false illusion of separateness that tells you that you are "better then" others who are different from you and that you don't need "none-whites" or "non-blacks" or "non-Hispanics" in your life?
Can you find God in those with developmental disabilities or mental illness?
Can you reject the false sense of separateness that causes you to "look down on" a child with autism who is having a temper tantrum in public, or causes you to think that the child has an inferior parent? Can you reject the false sense of separateness that causes you to disdain or fear anyone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder?
How deep is your love for God and for all of God's creation. Remember: THE PHOTO ABOVE WITH THE BLACK CHILD TOUCHING THE WHITE CHILD IS MEANT TO FILL YOU WITH LOVE AND HOPE, NOT FEAR AND DISLIKE.
GOD SAYS: "YOU WERE BORN TO LOVE, NOT HATE. YOU WERE BORN FOR UNITY."
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