Letters to My Aunt -

          Letter One - 'God as Love'                                                      

Dear Aunty,

     How nice, and what a surprise, to receive your letter ... this morning.

      .....The question of love has been a central theme in my spiritual development over the last decade or so. It is this, I believe, that has been at the heart of the learning process that I feel the Divine has guided me along. Since my traumatic ‘divorce’ from Pentecostal faith I have experienced such a beautiful, gradual – and still incomplete – realisation of the wonder of Love. It means very much to me that after my loss of faith (and since my personal declaration that if God exists then He had to come to me) that what I have begun to understand is, I believe, something of the nature of Divine Love which I had never seen before. This has not come from a pulpit, or even from books, initially, but from intuition, the nature realm and a guiding sense of the Infinite which can be seen and felt all around - the still small voice, if you will - in and through everything. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, ‘Look for the beauty in things and they will come alive.’ This beauty seems to form the essential nature of things and is intrinsically tied up with the Divine Love.

      I have just begun to read a new book and the opening chapter reads:

      “All the power, the love and prosperity we could ever want or need has already been created and is sitting in an incredibly safe place, right now – inside each and everyone of us. We have the richest inheritance of all – being the loved children of a loving creator. Our job is simply to remember this and reveal it in our lives and in the world. …It is our connection to the source of love that makes us powerful beyond measure, right now.”

      The author goes on to state that ultimately life’s experiences originate from one of two sources, love and fear. Once we allow the former to over rule the later then our true nature can flow. “When we take away our fear and our guilt, love is all that is left.”

      I was saddened to read your denial that love is not God. If love is not the ultimate of all things then what are we about? I would much prefer to see a God who is Love, just as A is A, and thereby one and the same thing. I have read St. John’s letters with interest on this point and I am fairly persuaded that he understands this, in principle. After all, if God and Love are not one and the same, then what is love reduced to? Where do we go from love? What is there that is greater? What hope do we have? Love cannot be an attribute of God. It has to be the sum total of God. If love is an attribute, as perhaps justice, forgiveness, etc. are, then it is compromised. From where does the love come? What lies beyond? No, love is the essence from which the other many attributes follow. And what are attributes, anyway, but man made attempts to define the indefinable.

      The Hindus have grasped this idea of the Divine and his many attributes, but, as I think I may have quoted before (from the Bhagavad Gita), Love is at the centre of all things. Writing of the creation of the universe the ancient sage wrote:

      “There was not then what is nor what is not. There was no sky, and no heaven beyond the sky…

        …Darkness was hidden in darkness. The all was fluid and formless. Therein, in the void, by the fire of fervour arose the ONE

       And in the ONE arose love. Love the first seed of soul.”

Rig Veda X.129

      Does it remind you, in part, of the opening chapter of Genesis?

      When St. John says ‘God is love’ in 1 John 4:8, he does not say ‘God loves’ or ‘God is loving’, as if speaking of some aspect of God, he quite clearly states, ‘for God is love’. He goes on to confirm this by saying, ‘if we love one another God abides in us.’ In verse 16 of the same chapter he writes,

     “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

     This becomes more evident when we reflect on how God is referred to in the New Testament. Attributes are given as adjectives: merciful, gracious, plentiful, long-suffering, etc. but here God is equated to a noun. It is not a partial description of him, but what he is. God equals Love.

      Speaking from my own experience, coming to realize that this is the essential nature of the Divine has truly awakened my soul and my spiritual faculties in a way that they were never aroused before. My spirit is free and feels reborn. I know this, I feel this so deeply within my very being. It is the very centre of my life. My soul lights up and warms to every confirmation of this truth in every facet of life. It feels to me that perhaps this could be what being ‘born again’ is all about.

      Look to that intuitive voice deep within. Allow it to whisper to you. Shut out the clamouring of the mind and sense what your heart is saying. Therein lies the secret.

      Love and best wishes .....

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