Made by Love to Love
“We were made by love to love.”
Richard Rohr
Unconditional Love: affection without any limitations; love without conditions.
Unconditional love is a phrase easily thrown around yet an incredibly intense, emotional and hard thing to do.
We preach against conditional love, judging those who are involved in this behavior, yet aren't we all, even the most altruistic, emerged in fickle love.
Life is fragile, we take our hits from the past and merge them into our future, a very normal thing to do. Yet it brings a weariness to our relational journeys. This propensity for life's baggage to follow us, is not necessarily a bad thing as long as we are aware of it.
With awareness comes the opportunity to dig up hidden hurts, claim our own woundedness and discover a new, hopefully more enlightened, free and selfless kind of living and loving.
Unconditional love can only flow out of a human heart which has navigated this very tough terrain. Even when it wrenches the gut and saddens a soul abused by conditional, selfish love.
My woundedness comes from many different sources. Wounds that have kept me on the guarded, protective, fragile path of conditional love.
My woundedness comes from my addiction for applause. Addiction to approval. Addiction to the fear of failure. And though I know the applause and approval of man is fickle and fleeting, I have discovered that I have surrendered to it.
My awareness of my woundedness has not come from an enlightened dream or a three-point sermon. It has not come from seemingly close friends, for I have learned they are fearful of my woundedness.
No, surprisingly, my awareness and potential healing has come from deep pain and a discovery of my Creator’s unconditional love. A love not afraid of my pain. A love which has entered and shared in my pain. A love which has reminded me it is ok to ask questions and let go of others' neurotic expectations. A love which encourages me to stretch, grow and find strength outside religion’s suffocating boundaries.
I have so much to be thankful for, the list is too long, yet I'm still wounded by the loss of my sisters, damage by betrayal and the continued fickleness of human applause. Yet I strive for this higher plane, where love has no jealousy, performance is not strangled by the need for approval and where God’s non-fickle love brings healing and hope to this chaotic world.
I'm learning I can't love someone else unconditionally until I learn to love myself unconditionally. In order to do that, I have to go to some dark places, get pissed off, accept the ugliness and beauty
of this world and discover unconditional, no strings attached, arms open wide, fully surrendered love. A love which liberates the soul to new and boundless freedoms we are all searching for.
As Richard Rohr stated, “We were made by unconditional love to love unconditionally.”
I'm not there yet, but it is my goal.
“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” Proverbs 17:17