Needing and accepting love where we are

We are created from love. Jeremy Driscoll:

"God opens up out of the nothingness a space for me to be. He creates me out of love and for the sake of love. And should I sin, he opens up out of that nothingness a new space for me out of love. In some ways this story of love is bigger than the whole material universe and the vast story of human living."

But we find ourselves broken and still in need of love. Julie Bogart:

"Love can't come if we fail to see that we are in need of a savior, in need of transformation.

Self-awareness comes right before we see that love is being offered to us. Something catalyzes the change, the self-analysis, and the personal reflection. Before love can meet our needs, we have to see our need. And we usually do. We get low enough, or we are sick of ourselves enough, or we feel lost or broken or dirty. That awareness opens the way for love to come in."

We need love in body and mind. James Gilligan:

"The soul needs love as vitally and urgently as the lungs need oxygen; without it the soul dies, just as the body does without oxygen. It may not be self-evident to healthy people just how literally true this is, for healthy people have resources of love that are sufficient to tide them over periods of severe and painful rejection or loss. Similarly, one does not realize how dependent the body is on oxygen until one has nearly suffocated, or has had to resuscitate someone who is gasping for breath. But when one has worked with deeply and seriously ill human beings, the evidence of the need for both oxygen and love is overwhelming."

We have to let it in through the bodies and minds we have, where we are. Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky:

"The whole concept of God taking on human shape, and all the liturgy and ritual around that, had simply never made any sense to me. That was because, I realized one wonderful day, it was so simple. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied. That's all. God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love."

Sources

Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B. A Monk's Alphabet: Moments of Stillness in a Turning World. Boston: New Seeds, 2006. p. 126.

"The Coming of Love." Julie Bogart. Printed in Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. Edited by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard. Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2003. p. 112.

James Gilligan. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. (1996) New York: Vintage Books, 1997. p. 51.

Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky. Quoted in Lauren F. Winner. Girl Meets God: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 2002. p. 74.