But, behind closed doors, the truth is that every relationship and every family has to cope with the same emotions and problems: loneliness, jealousy, anger, stress, frustration, unhealthy competitiveness, dominance issues, arguments, "getting on each other's nerves," misunderstandings, different kinds of disabilities, and different amounts of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.
We may look at these other seemingly Perfect People and feel very small indeed. But - we are all small, imperfect people leading small, imperfect lives. However that does not mean that God ignores us and considers us and our relationships insignificant. No, in God's Eyes and God's loving Heart, every one of us and every one of our relationships has eternal significance.
God is Love, and every one of us, made in God's Image, has this tremendous Divine power and capacity for Love, just waiting inside us to be set free. Fr. Thomas Keating said, "We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. So love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest." (Thomas Keating, Healing Our Violence through the Journey of Centering Prayer, disc 5, Franciscan Media: 2002), CD.)
The power of our life story lies in our power to love. Our capacity for love determines how our life story develops and how it ends. So often, our prayers seem to center on asking God to change other people, change circumstances in our lives. But our prayers should always begin with asking God to open our hearts enough that God can enter and work with us to change US. How often do we ask God: "How can I become more loving? How can my power and capacity to vibrate with Your Divine Love be purified and set free?"
To aid us in this ongoing self-work of becoming more loving, God has given us a Helper: the Holy Spirit. The Power of the Holy Spirit is a fire that God sets inside us as a tiny flame of courage. Every prayer of ours allows the Holy Spirit to breathe on that tiny flame of courage until it becomes a greater and greater fire. In the Light of this Fire of Courage, we can begin to look honestly at ourselves. As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Authentic spirituality is always first about you—about allowing your own heart and mind to be changed. It’s about getting your own who right." (Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, July 26.)
Strangely enough, we cannot begin to love anyone until we first can love ourselves. When, in the Fire and Light of the Holy Spirit, we begin to look honestly and courageously at ourselves, look past all of the self-deceptions we keep like masks upon our souls, our first reaction may be a violent dissatisfaction and disillusionment. We begin to see and grieve over all of the small or big ways that we fail at loving: how we try to manipulate others, or the ways in which we try to make ourselves look good by putting others down, how we always want to win an argument, or our endless impatience or secret selfishness, or even our constant passivity we fall back upon because it is easier than standing up for ourselves. We can see how often we let fear or self-pity overwhelm us so that we crawl into a self-protective shell.
But mentally yelling at ourselves does no good. How can we even begin to understand, accept, and forgive others if we cannot first understand, accept, and forgive ourselves? How can we be impatient with our faults and failings when God is unendingly patient with us? How can we love God or love others if we first can't love ourselves? It's better to repent (every day, again and again) and ask for the courage to get up each morning and try again.
In the Fiery Light of Courage which the Holy Spirit gives us, we can begin to see that every word and action of ours has eternal significance. In every word and act, we can have a goal of giving others loving encouragement and hope, or, in our casual neglect or even mocking cruelty, we can nudge others towards bitterness, isolation, and hatred or self-hate. Even our words on Facebook, in emails and texts, or on Twitter!
Once we are freer in spiritually sensing the ways in which we avoid loving, or are definitely UN-loving, we can begin loving FOR REAL: unselfishly, patiently, and without judgement. Noting other people's flaws and limitations no longer leads to us automatically judging them harshly because we have already taken a long, good, honest look at our own similar flaws and limitations. If people ask us to do them a favor, we no longer automatically think about what's in it for us.
Once we concentrate on Love as the most important Power in our life, we no longer let our particular life circumstances define us or overwhelm us. Love teaches us that we and everyone else are always More than our circumstances. We ALL are, as Father Keating says, "localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence.... love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name." Because of this tremendous Divine Power at work in us, and through us, our life story never has to end in the darkness of bitterness, self-induced isolation, self-pity, or despair.
This Power of God's Love sweeping into our lives may be gradual, it may have to patiently work to overcome our guilt, our grief, our anger, our self-loathing, our false pride. But once we allow the Fire of God's Love to go to work in us and shine through us, small - and sometimes large - miracles can begin to happen in our lives. Our Helper, the Holy Spirit, loves to make everyone and everything fresh and new. We can re-discover our original closeness to our husbands or wives. We can see our children through fresh eyes of understanding and appreciation. We can approach our jobs, our ministries, with new dedication and zest. No matter our circumstances, if we have become free enough to be an unselfishly loving and unique vibration of God's loving Presence, God's love is flowing through us towards others and towards all of creation in depths and directions we cannot even imagine or trace.
The power of your life story is the power of your capacity to unselfishly love as a unique vibration of God's Loving Presence. Your "smallness," your imperfections, do not bother God, and they should not bother you. After all, when God chose to enter this world, God became very small, a fragile, hungry human baby who needed frequent diaper changes. Compared to God's Infinite Love, each of us is a small "baby" in our ability to become God's luminous Presence for others, but we still have incredible potential to change the lives of others for the good. In his July 19 Daily Gospel Reflection, Bishop Robert Barron says:
"How does God tend to work? What does the building up of the kingdom typically look like? From the very small to the very great—and by a slow, gradual process. God tends to operate under the radar, on the edges of things, quietly, clandestinely, not drawing attention to himself.
"In the City of God, St. Augustine opined that the Church is like Noah’s ark, a small ship bouncing on the rough seas of history. As the great empires come and go, as the waves of history crash noisily against the shore, God’s kingdom is quietly advancing, unnoticed but inevitable.
"One of my very favorite images from C.S. Lewis speaks to this principle. How, he asks, did God enter history? Quietly, in a forgotten corner of the Roman Empire—sneaking, as it were, behind enemy lines."
Some days, it seems as if you can see all the flaws in all your relationships and you pray asking God to change others, to change your circumstances. But Love is the Divine Power operative in your life story, Love Who promises you that your life story need not continue or end in bitterness, self-pity, destructiveness, or despair. But you have to choose love first, will your heart and soul to open to love, want to love unselfishly and without self-interest, want to change. This is why your first prayer should always be: "How can I become more loving? How can my power and capacity to vibrate with Your Divine Love be purified and set free?" As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Authentic spirituality is always first about you—about allowing your own heart and mind to be changed. It’s about getting your own who right."
You are small. Imperfect. But, always remember: Divine Love is your nature. Divine Love is your first, last, and middle name. You are a unique vibration of Divine Love in this world. As an individual you are a spiritual "baby," small, fragile, imperfect. As an instrument, a vibration, of God's Divine Love, your life story, your every word and action, has a power, a divine significance, an impact on this world that you will not understand until you come, with tears of gratitude, to full maturity in heaven.