A later stage in our spiritual maturation process is the development of spiritual universal love where wisdom or spiritual discrimination is now added to our love. We now perceive all forms as various manifestations of one unchanging, ever blissful, divine consciousness.

In this state we experience pure love in which we cannot distinguish between the other and ourselves. Christ referred to this state saying, “I am in you and you are in me.”

Although, as in the previous stage, we continue to help and serve wherever we can, we are not so affected by the pain and suffering we encounter. We realize that the real spiritual consciousness expressing itself through that form has chosen to pass through that experience because it is exactly the next stimulus, which he or she needs for his or her spiritual growth process. We are now aware that we are all passing through the precise experiences, pleasant and unpleasant, which we need in order to wake up from our dream of this illusory material reality.

Although we are not affected by the suffering we see, we are even more wholly dedicated toward eliminating it. Thus, we love and accept all beings as they are while we direct our energies toward facilitating this process of our mutual spiritual unfoldment. Each of us moves forward in his or her own unique way.

Previously we may have tried to solve people’s problems for them. Now we realize that the most effective way we can others is to love and accept them as they are and empower them to find their own inner wisdom and strength in order to overcome their problems.

We now realize that the main solution for the world’s economic, political and social problems is education.

We experience such “wise love” or “loving wisdom” from the highest spiritual teachers. It is sometimes difficult to understand their love and caring, which at times to the beginner, may seem like indifference, especially when we pass through tests and expect sympathy and emotional reactions.

It is difficult for some to realize that it is sometimes more loving to allow someone to suffer a little more so he or she can find the solution him or herself and grow stronger and freer from ignorance. Only a realized being can know, however, when “not to help” externally because this would be the most loving act for a specific person.

Many parents would do well to learn this form of wise love. They might help their children far more if they refrain from solving their problems every time they are in trouble.

No one should, however, misconceive that this text is suggesting that we should not help those who are in need. We must help, but we must also ask ourselves what the most appropriate help would be in each situation.

The greatest and most precious help we can offer to those we love, is to help them get in touch with their inner power and wisdom. This, at times, means helping, and at others, means letting them struggle by themselves while we mentally pray for them and visualize them in light.

For an awakened spiritual being to see someone cry about some unhappy event in his or her life or fear some future possibility, might be like our watching a small child cry about a toy that has broken or express fear of the “boogie man.” We sympathize with and understand the child’s feelings. We love it and we want to help it, but we cannot really be worried.

Those who experience this level of love sometimes do not exhibit the emotional display which others may be used to interpreting as indications of love. As we grow spiritually, we begin to understand, however, that real love is a love for the soul within the other, which is seeking to free itself from ignorance and the illusion of weakness and fear.

These spiritually awakened beings offer help on other levels through their positive thought forms, prayers or sometimes, direct contact on the astral level, usually in dreams.

In this way, help is given without undermining the others’ self-confidence.

Loving the Wave or the Ocean

Part 6 of a 6 part series on the “The Stages of Love”

Robert Elias Najemy

When we limit our love to a specific person (we do not mean sexually, but rather emotionally, mentally and spiritually), it is difficult to experience love in its highest expression. We love this person and not others. We tend to focus on a specific person, “loving” them often because they offer us security, pleasure or affirmation; or because we consider them to be “ours.”

Pure love is universal. It can express itself toward any particular being, but it cannot limit itself to that being or group of beings. If it does, then it is love mixed with conditions. Each individual is one of the countless waves on an ocean of consciousness. The ocean is the One Universal Consciousness, which is temporarily taking the form of those specific waves and then disappearing into the formlessness of the ocean again before reappearing as billions of others. All waves are expressions of the one ocean.

When we single out one specific wave from the ocean of beings and limit our love to that, we are, in essence, loving an illusion. That being which we love is just a temporary manifestation of the one Universal Being, which manifests as all the other beings simultaneously.

That form on which we focus is a temporary physical, emotional, mental manifestation that will dissolve back into the ocean. When we love the water in that wave, that is, its spiritual essence, the spirit within, we begin to love all waves. The same water is in all the waves. The same spiritual essence is in all beings.

Then we love the spiritual essence in others and not only their form or the specific benefits that we receive from them. We love the spirit within.

Our love now becomes both unconditional and universal. It is unconditional because it does not depend on what others do or do not do, and universal because we start to love more and more people independent of their appearance, character and other superficial factors. We love the spirit within them. We as spirit are one with the spirit, which is within them.

So we can love the wave or we can love the ocean and thus all the waves. This is our choice.

Love is like the gold ore that is brought up from the earth; it is mixed with other metals (emotions, needs). Our job is to purify that gold through our efforts to love unconditionally in all of our relationships, no matter what the other does or does not do.

Only then will we truly be happy.
Only then will experience our true Self.

Be sure to look for the remaining the parts of this series:

1. What is Love ?
2. Love or Need for Security ?
3. Love, Pleasure or Affirmation?
4. Selfless Love
5. Spiritual Universal Love

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1. Just start to think logically and you will know that harassing your ex is not the way to go. Your ex will find you annoying and will just avoid you altogether. If you are overdoing it, it can even be considered as a criminal offence. If you really want to get your ex back, please avoid this mistake!

2. You should also avoid being too emotional. What is the point of cooping yourself at home and weeping at one corner of the house? Crying will not solve the problem. It is high time you dry your tears and start thinking about what to do next. If you really want to get ur ex back, please avoid this mistake!

3. You should never get personal with your ex and try to take revenge on your ex as this will really decrease the likelihood of you trying to get your ex back again. Such unethical acts will include going around and badmouthing your ex or even spilling your ex secrets to others. If you really want to get your ex back, please avoid this mistake!

Do you want your ex back? Do you want to get your ex back? How are you going to get your ex back? Learning how to get your ex back is not some rocket science; it is all possible if you know how! In the article, I have gone through a systematic plan which lays the foundation for you to learn how to get ur ex back.

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By definition alone the two differ in that, love is based on an affinity while lust is based solely on desire. The two also differ in how they affect a relationship but sometimes it becomes difficult to separate the two because lust can exist in the presence of love. Analyzing a loving relationship and a lustful relationship separately will help us to learn to distinguish love from lust.

Love has a positive affect on a relationship because when love exists in a relationship both partners hold the happiness of the other in a high esteem and place the happiness of their partner ahead of their own desires.

Love affects relationships in a myriad of ways including how the couple interacts, the leisure activities they participate in and the longevity of the relationship. In a loving relationship the couple behaves thoughtfully towards each other and is mindful of their partner’s feelings. In this type of relationship, each partner places themselves ahead of their partner and they strive to treat each other lovingly and with respect. Also, in a loving relationship the leisure activities that the couple participates in are based on a mutual love and respect.

Activities are chosen with careful consideration to the partner’s feelings. In a loving relationship the partners typically engage in activities that they either either strongly agree on or those that are a compromise. While a couple in a loving relationship may not always be in complete agreement regarding leisure activities, they strive to compromise to ensure that both partners have the opportunity to engage in their preferred activities. Finally a relationship that is based on love is usually long lasting.

The presence of love in the relationship enables a couple to work through any problems or difficulties that arise in the relationship and helps the relationship to endure. The thoughtfulness and caring that exists in a loving relationship helps the relationship to grown and endure.

Conversely a lustful relationship may not necessary have a negative affect on a relationship but it also may not be as positive as a loving relationship. Similarly to love, lust also affects a relationship in regard to how the couple interacts, the activities the couple participate in and the durability of the relationship.

The primary difference between a lustful and a loving relationship is that while in a loving relationship the partners place a high value on the happiness of their partner, a lustful relationship is one in which the partners are consumed by their own desires. The partners in a lustful relationship place their needs and wants ahead of their partner’s desires. This alone is enough to make their partner feel disrespected and to not place a high value on the relationship.

The fundamental selfishness that exists in a lustful relationship trickles down and affects the activities in which the couple participates. While those in a loving relationship strive to compromise and find activities that they both enjoy, those in a lustful relationship are more prone to insist on participating in activities that they enjoy regardless of whether or not their partner will also enjoy this activity.

One final characteristic of a lustful relationship is that it is typically short lived. A lustful relationship is driven by passion and desire and once a goal is reached the partner becomes no longer desirable. With nothing else to drive the relationship it soon begins to wane and the couple often separates.

Lustful relationships are characterized by a selfishness and lack of respect that typically results in a short and tumultuous relationship.

Complicating the issue of separating love and lust is that it is often possible for lust to exist within a loving relationship. The existence of lust within a loving relationship is often driven by a desire to become closer to the partner. This is a natural occurrence as a physical relationship is extremely important in a romantic relationship.

When lust exists within a loving relationship it is not necessarily detrimental to the relationship. As long as the lust does not take over the love and become the dominant characteristic it can be a healthy part of the relationship. The opposite is not true, however.

A lustful relationship can not also include love. The primary characteristic of selfishness does not enable love to factor into a lustful relationship. Placing your own desires ahead of your partner’s precludes the formation of a loving bond.

While it’s not possible to have a lustful relationship with the existence of love a little bit of lust mixed into a loving relationship can lead to a closer connection and stronger bond for the couple.

Separating love from lust can be complicated but the key factors to remember is that a loving relationship is one based on selflessness and thoughtfulness while a lustful relationship is characterized by selfishness and thoughtlessness. These fundamental differences often affect whether or not a relationship will be long lasting and will endure the test of time.

The separation of love from lust is further complicated by the fact that lust can exist in a loving relationship. The opposite, however, is not possible. Understand that lust can factor into a loving relationship and have a positive affect on the relationship is key to understanding the differences between love and lust.

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With these key elements examined, a person may realize that they are too rapidly generating the feeling of falling in love, and in doing so, producing unfortunate consequences. A life filled with a great amount of broken hearts predictably points to a great amount of relationships in which the person fell in love too quickly. Once acknowledged as a source of heartaches, one can achieve a more realistic approach to falling in love and finding someone special.

The majority of adult single people undoubtedly desire the ultimate feeling of being in love with another person. Instilled in people’s minds is that love will bring happiness, safely and security. Most people are witness to a loving relationship from a very young age, as we witness the love of our parents. As adults, the media overwhelms us with love stories. Countless advertising bombards us to find love. When one is single, it may seem that everywhere they look; there are couples holding hands, talking and laughing together. This can produce an overpowering desire for a person to find love.

Real and genuine love means connecting in ways that are almost indescribable. Present are the key elements that each desire in a relationship. There is a strong emotional attachment, as well as an intense physical attraction. The two people in the relationship spent time thoroughly getting to know the each other. These people will understand each other quirks and habits. They will learn each other’s history and the life that they lived up until they met. After sometime, a feeling of comfort and admiration occurs. As cliché as it sounds, if love is going to happen, both will have a feeling of “fitting together” and “finding their better half”. If both people involved in the relationship are content and their desires fulfilled, as time moves on, an increasing feeling of devotion and affection will change into a deep and strong feeling of love.

Without these fundamentals in place, having the feelings of falling in love exceedingly prematurely can result in needless heartbreaking outcomes. It is true that being single can sometimes produce intense feelings of loneliness. These feelings of solitude and wanting acceptance into a loving relationship can make one push for a relationship that is not correct for them. Beginning to spend time with another, sometimes a person will mistake the feeling of acceptance for the feeling of love. Love is not something easily obtained. For long periods, love can escape us, as we search for that someone special that we wish for in our lives.

Telling yourself that you are in love, does not create love. If not all of the essentials of genuine love are in place, convincing yourself that you are in love does not magically produce those necessary elements. If in almost every relationship you enter, you fall in love within a couple weeks or even days, you must ask yourself; are you really in love?

Undoubtedly, falling in love produces a magnificent euphoric high. The emotion of finding one’s “soul mate” fulfills a deep desire to bond with someone. True love is such a rare find. In terms of realistic expectations, one simply cannot sincerely be in love with every person they meet or date. Allowing yourself to feel you are in love with almost everyone you connect with, in a small measure of time, only will lead to ultimate disappointment. Sincerely asking yourself the question, “Was it really true love?” may give you the knowledge that perhaps you did not actually experience love. This is not to imply you did not admire someone, like spending time with him or her or had lust for him or her. However, did real love exist? Comprehending that it did not, may lessen the sense of feeling betrayed and the feeling of being wounded from relationships gone astray.

To free yourself from being the victim of lost “love”, give yourself the time to unequivocally get to know and appreciate someone, allowing love to happen in it’s own due course. Do not impulsively rush into a state of feeling in love. Seriously consider all of the factors that ensure a real and lasting love. Give this feeling time to develop. Only then, can you truly know that you are in love.

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Romeo and Juliet loved. There love was so deep they could not live without the other. A love that pitted them against rival families who were filled with hatred. Families that would never accept their love.

William Shakespeare wrote this epic tail showing how love can be defeated by the quarreling surrounding families. Love can be devoured by hate to the point that the only hope of two people to hold unto their love is by going to their graves.

Today over fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. Husbands and wives end their marriages stating:”Irreconcilable Differences” as the reason for there demise. But I tell you that it has nothing to do with their incompatibility, it has everything to do with our present day world.

We are a society separated by differences from skin color to ethnic backgrounds. We live in a world where everything, from our religion to our country, chooses whom we can love.

We have also become a society of workaholics. We are so burdened by our desire for things that we are chained to our work. When our spouse needs us, we can’t give except in material things. So love that once united becomes cold and every day trials become disasters.

Love and affection takes work. It takes spending time together. It takes making love often and forgetting the work we must accomplish in our life. Paul realized the need for strong committed relationship when he wrote these words in the Bible’s renown ‘love chapter’.

1 Corinthians 13: 1- 3, “I may be able to speak the languages of men and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell. I may have the gift of inspired preaching: I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains-but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burned-but if I have no love, this does me no good.”

We live in a very complex world that fights against all forms of love. We are at war and couples are the favorite target of the unseen spiritual forces of evil. Because Satan is the god of this world, he roams the earth devouring love and turning cupids arrows of love into hate by turning couples against each other through fights and quarrels.

God is love and the destruction of love puts a stop to good in the world and allows the fallen angels of hell to inflict punishment on those who are not under the protection of God. Satan knows if he can destroy marriages he can stop healthy families from forming strong unions bound together with love.

Families who understand the fight and stay together no matter what they face in life. Couples who love even when it is hard to love. Wives and husbands that refuse to keep a record of everything their mate has done wrong.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, “Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up: and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.”

Satan’s influence destroys couples by using their emotions as a weapon to lash out. He keeps them in the clutches of jealousy and selfishness by reminding them how much time there mate spends with other people, instead of them.

But under the influence of the Spirit of God we are given another message. Truth teaches us to let go of each others faults, not to keep records of wrongs, and to allow forgiveness to heal our problems. The Spirit of God helps us to have patience and gives us hope that things will get better in future.

We live in a corrupt and evil world that demands that we serve it. In order to set up a house, we must work! The same must happen within the makeup of a marriage. We must constantly forgive and love and talk out our relationship problems so Satan doesn’t get a foothold into our lives and corrupt us through evil thoughts.

The only way we can do this is by holding tightly to the love we have for our husband or wife. We must recognize Satan’s influence in our thinking and fight for love.

We need to understand that Love is God and only through God can we stand firm and be unaffected by lives ups and downs. Because God is everlasting and eternal.

1Corinthians 13:8&9, “Love is eternal. There are inspired messages, but they are temporary; there are gifts of speaking in strange tongues, but they will cease; there is knowledge, but it will pass. For our gifts of knowledge and of inspired messages are only partial; but when what is perfect comes, then what is partial will disappear.”

Love helps us to face all forms of tragedies from the loss of a child to facing a disease or disability. Love helps us to dig our way out of financial crisis from job loss or company reorganization.

By facing this world, within the establishment of a strong relationship, we have strength. Jesus said when two or more pray together, He answers their prayers.

As people of faith we must pray for our relationships and hold tight when tragedies rear their ugly head. Together, couples can achieve miracles through faith in God, but when couples fight without God, they fail.

1Corthinthians 13: 11-13, “When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child; now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways. What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. What I know now is only partial; then it will be complete-as complete as God’s knowledge of me.

Meanwhile these three remain; faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.”

We must put aside childish emotions that allow jealousy, evil, and all forms of strive to enter into our marriages and think like adults. We must learn to overcome adversity with love.

Love is not a Shakespearean tragedy that results in both parties dying. Love is a force that stands up against all opposition and wins. Love produces hope and faith that nothing is impossible when God is the head of our household.

Cupid’s arrows hit strong fortresses of love. Couples who would Fight For Love!

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This is the reason that it hurts so much when you are betrayed by love. It was as if the pearl that was so valuable fell out of it’s setting and was lost to you forever. But it was worse than that for me, because I was not lost. The person I loved just discarded me, she cut me off without a word and left me bewildered as to why. I believe one reason she tossed me aside was because our relationship would have caused a change that her family would not have liked.

She confided to me that her son forbid her to ever have anything to do with me! I was surprised, but I just brushed it off believing that her son would eventually get used to us being together. It is true I had no relationship with him after we parted, but it was her decision to cut him off from me.

We had previously spent seventeen years together and I had been her son’s other parent from the age of four. I still loved him and I still thought of him as my child. I always prayed for him and his own young son, just like my own three children, whether his mother and I were together or not.

I really didn’t understand why her family was a problem. When we were together there never was a good relationship with her father or her grandparents. So why would this time be any different.

Things were totally opposite with my own children. They were very open to the possibility of us getting back together. They all stated emphatically that they wanted me to be happy and they would accept any decision I made. Even though they knew it would mean I wouldn’t have as much time for them.

I listened to everything she had to say about how hard her coming back to me would be. I once again asked her if she was sure and she said that she was. I believed she truly was done with her current relationship and that in time her family would accept us being together.

Love shared with another person is the most valuable thing a person can have to sustain life. When love is in place then you feel secure and safe, because you know the other person has your back.

True love makes you willing to give up your life for the other person. You happily make sacrifices because the love you feel is worth more than all the money in the world.

It was an easy thing for me to not even question that she was using me for money. I believed her when she said she was behind on her bills and she needed money for food. I believed her when she said she loved me and that she and I would be together again soon.

True love is the reason why couples can face all forms of disasters. Love gives them the strength to stand by their children when they are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Love gives them the ability to face the loss of a child or to handle the affects of a natural disaster that takes everything they own. Love makes a couple strong!

This is the reason people say it is better to love than to never have loved. Human love is wonderful, but real love is to understand that when it fails, God’s love is everlasting!

I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior when I was seven years old. I didn’t understand what an important decision that was for me until I began to experience all the pain the world can throw at a person. I didn’t understand how much I would need Jesus to be my Savior!

I didn’t understand how much I needed a God that had supernatural powers. I only began to understand how much I needed a Savior when my world came crashing down around me.

My human weaknesses wanted me to give up and believe that I had no hope! My inability to hold onto love made me want to quit life and cut myself off from all human beings. I wanted to protect myself from ever being hurt again and death seemed like a wonderful option.

This is when I needed a Savior! This is when I needed Jesus Christ to give me the strength to take one day at a time. This is when I believed that I could have a future that is better than the betrayal I found from the person I loved.

Falling back onto my faith in God I sought Him to explain why I had to suffer for love. I believed that God was giving her back to me. Yet here I was alone.

When Adam and Eve ate the apple, they changed our world. Their desire to be like God brought all mankind to the valley of decision. A decision where we would be presented with choices. The Bible describes these choices as tests. The ultimate goal of the test is to get us to understand the difference between good and evil. Differences that would lead us to understand why love is God, while hate is Satan. God also refers to this as overcoming sin. This is illustrated in the example given to us when Cain kills his brother Abel.

Genesis 4: 6&7, “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why that scowl on your face? If you had done the right thing, you would be smiling; but because you have done evil, sin is crouching at your door. It wants to rule you, but you must overcome it.’”

The illustration of Cain and Abel shows us how freewill works in our lives. Our own will determines which path we take. One path leads to the reward of Heaven and unconditional love and the other to losing our game of life to evil and being destroyed by the tests we face.

This is the reason why those who don’t have the saving power of Jesus Christ, commit suicide or get lost in a drug addiction. They can’t stand up to the betrayals of life, so they give up. This is the reason why people commit crimes against each other by taking money under false pretenses. They do this because they choose to take care of themselves and they don’t think of how it hurts another person.

Being betrayed by love doesn’t make your heart stop loving the person. You still love and knowing how the game of life works makes you look at the betrayal differently. You are afraid for the person who caused you harm. Because you know that what she did to you was wrong.

When Jesus walked the earth He brought an entirely different message. His words changed how people reacted to those who hurt them. These words brought a kinder and gentler way of handling the problems we will face in the world with love.

Mark 12:31a, “The second most important commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’”

John 15: 12&13, “My commandment is this; love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them.”

Matthew 6:14&15, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

We are to love regardless of what happens to us. We are to forgive because when we harbor the grief we feel, then it can pull us down and make us hate. And hate is the opposite of love. To hate is to sin and that makes us just as susceptible to evil as the person who hurt us.

Matthew 6: 24, “No one can be a slave of two masters; he will hate one and love the other; he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

When she took money from me, I truly believed that she did have real financial needs. I do not love money, I use money to live and to help others.

I tell the story of my betrayal not to get back at the person who did this to me, because I will always love her. Rather I tell it so the betrayals that you suffer will lead you to forgive and move on with your life.

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and He will help you to let go of the pain. Letting go allows God to help you heal. Having faith in a supernatural God helps give you strength and helps you to endure no matter what happens to you in the greatest game ever played, the game of life.

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1 Corinthians 13

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

The words of St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, from towards the end (thirteenth chapter, to be exact).

It’s one of the most familiar passages in the Bible, I think. Even if you have not studied it personally or heard it read out here on a Sunday morning before, there is almost no doubt that you have heard it read at some time, and most probably at a wedding.

I can’t remember being present at many weddings where this passage hasn’t been read and I can’t remember taking many weddings where the couple haven’t requested it.

Indeed, even those who do not know where to find the passage, when asked, “have you thought about what Bible reading you would like at your wedding?”, almost invariably answer, “how about the love passage?” Do you mean “Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful or rude – that passage?”, I ask. “Yes, that’s the one!”

And most of us clerical wedding celebrant types wince a little when this is said too, as we know, and as anybody who has been to Bible College or spent any amount of time studying the Bible knows, that this passage is really quite inappropriate for a wedding, and this for two reasons:

Paul’s eulogy here is part of his discussion about how to use spiritual gifts within the church community, and is not addressed to couples.

The sort of love Paul is taking about does not seem to be the sort of romantic love that we associate with weddings.

Yet people continue to ask for it, because it is beautiful and poetic, and indeed, as a piece of verse, it surely must be the most beautiful piece that St Paul ever wrote.

And they ask for it too, I think, because, even though St Paul is not talking about romantic love, and even though he is not addressing couples, I think we recognise in Paul’s description of love here some of the most fundamental elements that a long-term loving relationship needs if it is going to be successful.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (vss. 4-7)

If Paul is not talking about romantic love, what is he talking about?

‘Commitment’ would be my usual response here: Christian love is not about feeling passionate towards lots of people, it’s about commitment to their needs.

And that’s gotta be true, as far as it goes. But as I read through this beautiful poem of St Paul’s again, I wonder whether Paul’s understanding of love was really as devoid of emotional entanglement as the word ‘commitment’ might suggest?

“Faith is passion”, said Kierkegaard, and I suspect Paul would have agreed with him, and if faith is passion, surely love is passion too.

You see, the problem we have here with getting inside Paul’s head to really grasp what he meant by ‘love’ is not only that he wrote it a long time ago and in another language, but that he and the rest of the early Christian community more or less constructed their own language of love.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book about this. I suspect that a number of you have read it – ‘The Four Loves’ it is called.

In it, Lewis points out that there were three words in first century Greek regularly used for love – ‘Eros’, ‘storge’ and ‘philia’. These three loves are, respectively, romantic love, family love, such as we have for our children, and the more formal sort of love, such as the love the Godfather might have for you – a love that carries with it a clear expectation that a service will be done in return.

“Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But uh, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.” (Vito Corleone)

Strangely, when the New Testament writers chose a term for love, which is a word that turns up rather a lot in the New Testament, they deliberately avoided all these standard terms, and employed instead a reasonably colourless Greek word – ‘agape’ – and then went about the task of defining it!

Evidently the early Christians felt that they were talking about something new and different when they talked about the love of Christ, and so they felt that none of the old words for love would do. So instead of using one of those words, and trying to put a bit of a twist on it, they decided to take a little known word and mould it more appropriately for their own use.

Now, I don’t want this sermon to be just an academic dissertation on the meaning of certain words in ancient Greek, but we are dealing with a significant question here that is relevant to all of us.

Jesus is always telling us that we’ve gotta love people, but what was He talking about? We know He didn’t mean that you have to be in love with everybody, which would not only be an impossible task, but something that would be rather disastrous in our litigious environment, as you’d find yourself up on harassment charges very quickly! So what did He mean?

Well, if we take our starting point from these words of St Paul’s, we’d have to say that love has got a lot to do with persistence.

‘Love is patient’, Paul says, or as the older translations put it, ‘love suffereth long’.

In other words, ‘Love puts up with a lot of stuff”, and this same concept is reinforced again four times in verse 7 of this short passage.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Love, it seems, has a lot to do with sticking it out. Love goes the distance. Indeed, St Paul concludes this passage by reflecting on the fact that while life is transient and all things pass away in time, yet “Three things abide, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.”

I don’t know if many of you smoke Marlborough. Even if you don’t smoke the cigarettes, I suspect that most of us would be old enough to remember the ‘Marlborough Country’ ads.

I heard an interview once with marketing guru, Jay Conrad Levinson, where he talked about the history of the ‘Marlborough Man’ ad campaign. In its day, he said, it was the most expensive ad campaign ever undertaken by any company ever.

They created a whole world in the American wild west, which they called, ‘Marlborough Country’, and they created this rugged, outdoor individual, who had the strength and determination to survive and thrive in this world, and he smoked Marlborough!

They took this bold initiative because their brand was ranking poorly in terms of sales and because surveys showed that they were perceived as a feminine brand.

A year after launching this massive campaign and spending an enormous amount of money in rolling it out, they did their surveys and tallied up their figures again, and found that they were still doing poorly in sales and that they were still perceived as a feminine brand!

And so members of the board of Phillip Morris (who produced the cigarettes) moved to scrap the campaign and salvage whatever funds and credibility they had left. But the chairman apparently said, “give it a bit more time”. And sure enough, within another year, after continuing to pour time and money into the campaign, they’d hit no.1 in sales and their public perception had changed completely.

What’s that got to do with 1 Corinthians 13, you might be asking? It’s the concept of persistence, or, as Levinson put it in that interview, ‘maintaining the attack’.

You might think it a rather inappropriate illustration to use in a sermon, but I can tell you that I have found myself regularly reflecting upon that story in my thinking, as I have thought about our church!

I am in my seventeenth year here, believe it or not. Seventeen years ago I was convinced that we could build up this church, become financially viable, and offer genuinely useful service to this community. I thought it would take us a year or two. Seventeen years later, we’re still not quite there, though we’re closer than we were. And so I think back to that story and ask myself, ‘do you believe in what you’re doing?’ And the answer is always ‘yes’. Then ‘maintain the attack.’

Of course Paul’s exhortation to persist is not focused on projects but on people. It is people that we need to love, people that we must not give up on, people we must endure, hope for, believe in, and persist with, for this is what love is.

It is hard for all of us, as members of this church, not to sideline some members – write them off because they are difficult, unproductive, draining or just downright obnoxious. But Paul believed that everybody had a place and that everybody had something to offer. God so constructs the body of believers such that every member is important and every member has a vital contribution to make to the body as a whole.

Sometimes it is not obvious what it is that some persons have to contribute, but don’t give up on them – maintain the attack, persist, keep working with them, for God has placed those people here too so that they might enrich the life of the body as a whole and push us forward in our ministry and mission.

Persistence, it seems, is the key, pastorally, to making the Christian community work, which is why love is always deeply associated with that other fundamental Christian virtue – forgiveness.

It may be this emphasis on persistence that makes this passage is so popular in weddings too. For I think each of us knows deep down that so much of what makes a marriage work is the fact that we are willing to stick it out and keep working on it.

I heard of a women who was overheard, toasting her husband on the occasion of their fortieth wedding anniversary with the words, “in spite of everything!”

That might sound somewhat cynical, but I think it is true, that the miracle of good relationships is that they do work, in spite of everything, as there are so many things that can destroy them.

And that’s as true of the church as it is of our marriages. In spite of everything, we have opted to stick it out with each other, in the hope that we might still serve God more effectively by worshipping Him and serving Him together.

In spite of everything – in spite of our individual weaknesses, in spite of the dramas and scandals that regularly threaten to up-end us, in spite of our tiredness, and in spite of the fact that, even after seventeen years, we haven’t reaped all the rewards for our hard work, as we may have like, we persist … because we love, and because that’s what love is all about.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. … So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

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1 Corinthians 13

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

The words of St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, from towards the end (thirteenth chapter, to be exact).

It’s one of the most familiar passages in the Bible, I think. Even if you have not studied it personally or heard it read out here on a Sunday morning before, there is almost no doubt that you have heard it read at some time, and most probably at a wedding.

I can’t remember being present at many weddings where this passage hasn’t been read and I can’t remember taking many weddings where the couple haven’t requested it.

Indeed, even those who do not know where to find the passage, when asked, “have you thought about what Bible reading you would like at your wedding?”, almost invariably answer, “how about the love passage?” Do you mean “Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful or rude – that passage?”, I ask. “Yes, that’s the one!”

And most of us clerical wedding celebrant types wince a little when this is said too, as we know, and as anybody who has been to Bible College or spent any amount of time studying the Bible knows, that this passage is really quite inappropriate for a wedding, and this for two reasons:

Paul’s eulogy here is part of his discussion about how to use spiritual gifts within the church community, and is not addressed to couples.

The sort of love Paul is taking about does not seem to be the sort of romantic love that we associate with weddings.

Yet people continue to ask for it, because it is beautiful and poetic, and indeed, as a piece of verse, it surely must be the most beautiful piece that St Paul ever wrote.

And they ask for it too, I think, because, even though St Paul is not talking about romantic love, and even though he is not addressing couples, I think we recognise in Paul’s description of love here some of the most fundamental elements that a long-term loving relationship needs if it is going to be successful.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (vss. 4-7)

If Paul is not talking about romantic love, what is he talking about?

‘Commitment’ would be my usual response here: Christian love is not about feeling passionate towards lots of people, it’s about commitment to their needs.

And that’s gotta be true, as far as it goes. But as I read through this beautiful poem of St Paul’s again, I wonder whether Paul’s understanding of love was really as devoid of emotional entanglement as the word ‘commitment’ might suggest?

“Faith is passion”, said Kierkegaard, and I suspect Paul would have agreed with him, and if faith is passion, surely love is passion too.

You see, the problem we have here with getting inside Paul’s head to really grasp what he meant by ‘love’ is not only that he wrote it a long time ago and in another language, but that he and the rest of the early Christian community more or less constructed their own language of love.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book about this. I suspect that a number of you have read it – ‘The Four Loves’ it is called.

In it, Lewis points out that there were three words in first century Greek regularly used for love – ‘Eros’, ‘storge’ and ‘philia’. These three loves are, respectively, romantic love, family love, such as we have for our children, and the more formal sort of love, such as the love the Godfather might have for you – a love that carries with it a clear expectation that a service will be done in return.

“Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But uh, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.” (Vito Corleone)

Strangely, when the New Testament writers chose a term for love, which is a word that turns up rather a lot in the New Testament, they deliberately avoided all these standard terms, and employed instead a reasonably colourless Greek word – ‘agape’ – and then went about the task of defining it!

Evidently the early Christians felt that they were talking about something new and different when they talked about the love of Christ, and so they felt that none of the old words for love would do. So instead of using one of those words, and trying to put a bit of a twist on it, they decided to take a little known word and mould it more appropriately for their own use.

Now, I don’t want this sermon to be just an academic dissertation on the meaning of certain words in ancient Greek, but we are dealing with a significant question here that is relevant to all of us.

Jesus is always telling us that we’ve gotta love people, but what was He talking about? We know He didn’t mean that you have to be in love with everybody, which would not only be an impossible task, but something that would be rather disastrous in our litigious environment, as you’d find yourself up on harassment charges very quickly! So what did He mean?

Well, if we take our starting point from these words of St Paul’s, we’d have to say that love has got a lot to do with persistence.

‘Love is patient’, Paul says, or as the older translations put it, ‘love suffereth long’.

In other words, ‘Love puts up with a lot of stuff”, and this same concept is reinforced again four times in verse 7 of this short passage.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Love, it seems, has a lot to do with sticking it out. Love goes the distance. Indeed, St Paul concludes this passage by reflecting on the fact that while life is transient and all things pass away in time, yet “Three things abide, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.”

I don’t know if many of you smoke Marlborough. Even if you don’t smoke the cigarettes, I suspect that most of us would be old enough to remember the ‘Marlborough Country’ ads.

I heard an interview once with marketing guru, Jay Conrad Levinson, where he talked about the history of the ‘Marlborough Man’ ad campaign. In its day, he said, it was the most expensive ad campaign ever undertaken by any company ever.

They created a whole world in the American wild west, which they called, ‘Marlborough Country’, and they created this rugged, outdoor individual, who had the strength and determination to survive and thrive in this world, and he smoked Marlborough!

They took this bold initiative because their brand was ranking poorly in terms of sales and because surveys showed that they were perceived as a feminine brand.

A year after launching this massive campaign and spending an enormous amount of money in rolling it out, they did their surveys and tallied up their figures again, and found that they were still doing poorly in sales and that they were still perceived as a feminine brand!

And so members of the board of Phillip Morris (who produced the cigarettes) moved to scrap the campaign and salvage whatever funds and credibility they had left. But the chairman apparently said, “give it a bit more time”. And sure enough, within another year, after continuing to pour time and money into the campaign, they’d hit no.1 in sales and their public perception had changed completely.

What’s that got to do with 1 Corinthians 13, you might be asking? It’s the concept of persistence, or, as Levinson put it in that interview, ‘maintaining the attack’.

You might think it a rather inappropriate illustration to use in a sermon, but I can tell you that I have found myself regularly reflecting upon that story in my thinking, as I have thought about our church!

I am in my seventeenth year here, believe it or not. Seventeen years ago I was convinced that we could build up this church, become financially viable, and offer genuinely useful service to this community. I thought it would take us a year or two. Seventeen years later, we’re still not quite there, though we’re closer than we were. And so I think back to that story and ask myself, ‘do you believe in what you’re doing?’ And the answer is always ‘yes’. Then ‘maintain the attack.’

Of course Paul’s exhortation to persist is not focused on projects but on people. It is people that we need to love, people that we must not give up on, people we must endure, hope for, believe in, and persist with, for this is what love is.

It is hard for all of us, as members of this church, not to sideline some members – write them off because they are difficult, unproductive, draining or just downright obnoxious. But Paul believed that everybody had a place and that everybody had something to offer. God so constructs the body of believers such that every member is important and every member has a vital contribution to make to the body as a whole.

Sometimes it is not obvious what it is that some persons have to contribute, but don’t give up on them – maintain the attack, persist, keep working with them, for God has placed those people here too so that they might enrich the life of the body as a whole and push us forward in our ministry and mission.

Persistence, it seems, is the key, pastorally, to making the Christian community work, which is why love is always deeply associated with that other fundamental Christian virtue – forgiveness.

It may be this emphasis on persistence that makes this passage is so popular in weddings too. For I think each of us knows deep down that so much of what makes a marriage work is the fact that we are willing to stick it out and keep working on it.

I heard of a women who was overheard, toasting her husband on the occasion of their fortieth wedding anniversary with the words, “in spite of everything!”

That might sound somewhat cynical, but I think it is true, that the miracle of good relationships is that they do work, in spite of everything, as there are so many things that can destroy them.

And that’s as true of the church as it is of our marriages. In spite of everything, we have opted to stick it out with each other, in the hope that we might still serve God more effectively by worshipping Him and serving Him together.

In spite of everything – in spite of our individual weaknesses, in spite of the dramas and scandals that regularly threaten to up-end us, in spite of our tiredness, and in spite of the fact that, even after seventeen years, we haven’t reaped all the rewards for our hard work, as we may have like, we persist … because we love, and because that’s what love is all about.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. … So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Technorati Tags: 1 Corinthians 13, Greatest, love, Noisy Gong, Studying The Bible, These, Wedding Celebrant

Listening as people recollect and offer their own beauty stories, I am in awe of the ways that beauty moves in our lives. Everyone who has a family, or loves an animal or a place or a piece of music, has a beauty story to tell. A man reflects on the challenge of keeping Eros alive in a long marriage, a woman speaks of what it was like to grow up with a mother who was a model, another comments on learning how to appreciate her own beauty when compared to a classically gorgeous sister.

As we speak about our personal relationship to beauty and what is beautiful to us, we reveal our longings to be seen, our need for acceptance, the powerful influence of mothers and fathers, grandparents, older siblings, first loves and favorite cousins, our keen ability to remember what embarrassed, confused, and delighted us, our yearnings to stand out and to fit in, our desire to be loved. In our own stories we mark the distinction between looking beautiful and feeling beautiful — the part of us trapped by our culture and the part of us that knows our own value.

A nurse declares that her beauty secret is that the husband who adores her is nearsighted, so when she is close enough for him to see her, is seeing her with the eyes of love. A newspaper story describes how a young interracial blind couple got together when she became attracted to voice, reminding us that prejudice is born in dismissing people because look different, because we see them as exotic and frightening.

“Love is blind,” we say, but perhaps it is more accurate to say love sees with different eyes. Love sees beyond the surface. Love opens the door for beauty. When we see with the eye, we develop the ability to refine, to judge, to discriminate. When we see with the heart, we expand the view of what it is to be human, see the common dream, see the wisdom of friends and neighbors, see there is no separation between that which is most beautiful and the everyday world. The eye of the heart sees with a wholeness that allows imperfections and idiosyncrasies to coexist with beauty. The eye of the heart knows surface and depth are not opposites. Beauty is a process, a revelation, not a finished state.

Beauty reveals itself over time in relationship. The people I love are beautiful to me. I’m not sure if my eyes are blinded by love or it is love that lets me see their beauty. Knowing them over time, my appreciation of who they are and how they appear increases. Their beauty comes from their liveliness and authentic sweetness, their intention to live lives that make some sense (and some nonsense), the spirited coherence of being who they are.

A teacher recalls sitting in on another teacher’s class and thinking, “Isn’t it strange how ordinary looking, how rather plain these kids are? My students are beautiful.” She sees her students as gorgeous because she knows them well. “When you sit with them or work with them and see them every day and know their moods, they become more amazing, not less so,”‘ she says. “And then, I realized that the kids in the other classroom look beautiful to their teacher, too.”

When a beautician notes, “All my clients are beautiful,” I hear how her awareness of and attention to beauty brings it out in others.

When we are most alive, we are beautiful. When we are in love, we are reminded that we are beautiful. And sometimes when we know we are beautiful, we find ourselves in love. “In love” usually means the romantic sense of being with one other person who in that moment we feel reflects us perfectly. In love, living in the field of love. Sometimes I have felt like I was in love, even when there was no one I was in love with. I couldn’t talk about my lover’s hands or eyes or voice. I couldn’t focus all this love on one other, and it was both confusing and revealing to realize how much we become places for each other to rest in. Alone and “in love” it is easy to feel like you’re making it up. Our songs and movies have told us such great sentimental stories about being “in love,” we forget that being in love can be a state of truth as well as an illusion.

Longtime friends witnessing a friend “falling in love” often caution the infatuated person that being in love is a dizzy, temporary state. I think of this territory not just as a delicious romantic dance, but as a field to which we can travel from many places. There is a way in which being in love with anything — a person, a place, a project — is crossing a border into a country where the ego does not rule, being in a state where essence is honored. We are both inside and outside our everyday selves. It is always interesting to observe what happens when we return to the land of ordinary life. Can we live with more generosity and trust?

I never want to underestimate the capacity that being “in love” has to change our seeing, expand our vision, and remind us of both human beauty and human frailty. The search for the beloved is full of paradoxes. We want to be who we are when we are our best self, and sometimes because we have met that self when we are in love, we believe that self only exists in the presence of the other. So we hold on to the other and lose ourselves, forget that love is partly of this world and partly of some other place.

An old beau spoke of the danger of trying to make our lovers be God, insisting that we each need our own relationship to the Source. It sounded logical, but I rebelled at his analysis. In this world, one of the ways we glimpse God is when we are in love. Not that the beloved is God, but that God is the Beloved, a tradition as old as the Song of Songs and the ecstatic poems of wandering Indian mystics, the Sufis. One of the most beautiful and accessible ways to address God is as Love.

The Greeks gave us an image of Eros, the unpredictable archer before whom even the Gods trembled. Hindus tell their stories of the Gopi maidens seeking Krishna, the bewitchingly beautiful, blue-skinned god; Krishna with his soft glowing eyes, perfumed hair, Krishna drawing women to him, touching each in forgotten registers of being.

What is done with love is done in beauty to celebrate the God that loves. More and more I believe the messengers of love, the envoys and the couriers of beauty are everywhere. And I wonder how something so clear can also be mysterious. The Indian poet Ghalib writes, “This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love that the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.”

from the book Notes on the Need for Beauty by J. Ruth Gendler Published by Marlowe & Company; May 2007;.95US; 978-1-56924-292-6 Copyright © 2007 J. Ruth Gendler

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I feel it, when I sorrow most;

‘Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all”

When Lord Alfred Tennyson had written these wonderful lines, he must have thought about those millions of romantics who wander around in this world. History has witnessed that lovers have had a world of their own where there is nobody to perturb them. Being in love is probably one of the most beautiful things that can happen to someone in a lifetime. Love means a world of its own where things are beautiful and everything seems to be as pure as the word love itself. In fact the world of love is a world of variety. There are various forms, shades and moods of love and the only one thing that can complement this diversity of love are love songs. In fact love songs could actually complement your style of love.

In fact love songs are probably one of the best ways to express your love for that someone special. To be very honest love songs can complement your mood. Whether they are romantic and merry love songs or sad and painful love songs, one has to go through that phase of love while singing that song or while penning that song. Love songs have the capability in them to evoke the feeling of love in the one who listens to them. In fact being in love gives one a certain feeling of freedom and this gets very well reflected through the various love songs that talk about new love and how one feels the freshness and the liberty in a newly found love. Again sad love songs can make one weep and feel the pain of lost love or a love that could never bud. Somebody very rightly said that love and music know no bounds and that they have a deep connection between them.

In fact perfect love songs and the perfect atmosphere can make a person easily express his love for that special someone. In fact as I already said love songs have this immense potential in them that can make a person fall in love and can make a person feel the pain of a lost love. At times love can cause immense pain and this pain can be only understood by the ones who have felt it. Love is probably the only thing that can bring to one immense joy as well as heartbreaking pain. The pain of losing your loved one is probably the worst feeling that one can go through. In fact the song “My heart will go on” by Celine Dion still evokes the feeling of the eternal love and the pain that one goes through when one has to lose the love of his life.

These days love songs are not only available in CDs and DVDs but one can find some of the greatest love songs on the internet and can download them and store them for eternity. Love is an eternal feeling and music makes others feel good and when love songs are made they are meant to make the world the most beautiful place to be in. But yes one should always remember that love is the one thing that brings joys as well as the pain.

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