A friend sent me the link to this video earlier
this week. It is breathtaking in its natural scenery but the accompanying
script is well worth considering as well.
My greatest task at Living School was learning
to let G_d love me, to be able to be embraced by that loving energy without
withdrawing in shame or fear that I was not good enough as I have done most of
my life.
I was challenged to recognize that I was needed in the wide network of
loving-energy synapses beginning with G-d to insure that the love of G-d would
be felt throughout creation.
I had to learn that I am but one link, but I am
a link. Without all the links, the loving-energy becomes bottled up and is
thwarted from its mission: to fill all of the Cosmos with the loving-energy of
G-d.
But I have also learned that I am more than
that. I am G-d’s child. I was created very good and loved by G-d from the
moment of my creation. And despite anything I might have done to besmirch it, I
have always borne the image of G_d. For most of my life I have had difficulty
recognizing it on my own face even as I have worked hard to locate it in the
face of all creatures I encounter with moderate success.
But both are necessary.
“To learn that they cannot make anyone love them…What they
can do is let themselves be loved.”
This particular line speaks so much to me. I
spent much of my life trying to get people to love me. I simply could not love
myself. I felt myself to be patently unlovable so I sought it outside of
myself. Worse yet, I led a driven life of overachievement to prove to myself
and others that I was lovable.
But that was a losing gambit. And I think about
how many people I treated unfairly and demanded too much of along the way trying
to receive from them what could only have come from within myself. For that I
am sorry and hope they can find the way to forgive me.
That life of striving and codependency was
clearly predicated on the conditional love I felt as a kid growing up in a
redneck, football and hunting town. I never fit in there. And I never felt okay
about that. But I do not blame them. I simply recognize the context for what it
was.
Once I recognized I was not just different,
that I could never be other than who I was, my only choice was to love myself
or kill myself. It was a toss-up for far too long and my behavior sometimes
pointed in the direction of an extended systematic suicide through self-abusive
behaviors. My body and my soul bear the scars of those struggles. But my life bears
witness to the ultimate victory of love.
In the end, love won the day. Thanks be to G_d!
By virtue of all the many human sources
of love, all the little affirmations, all the encouragements, all those who
allowed themselves to believe in me even as I did not believe in myself, love
won the day. And now I seek to be the conduit of loving-energy that allows that
divine dance to course through my being, loving all of who I am, and then to
spread out across the good Creation.
As we Franciscans say, “Lord, make me an
instrument of your peace.”
I am indebted to those who never gave up on me.
I am indebted to the Living School who gave me the tools to be present with G-d
and simply let G-d love me. And I thank you for this video which ignited these
words I felt compelled to utter in response, this day before my 64th
birthday.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
frharry@cfl.rr.com
harry.coverston@knights.ucf.edu
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined
belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
© Harry Coverston 2017
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