Holy Cross Day

The idea for this project is to ask a question to Love.  To ask a question to the Spirit of Unconditional Love.  And then to wait quietly, and see what reply emerges, and write that down.  Shortly before my silent retreat, I came across one of them on Liz Gilbert’s Substack which I found particularly meaningful, and during my silent retreat I had the time and space for it to soak into me.  It was written by Maggie Doyne, whom I hadn’t heard of before.  When Maggie was a teenager who had just graduated from high school in the States, she took the babysitting money she had been carefully saving for years, and used it for a trip backpacking around the world.  On the trip she saw the suffering of impoverished children in Nepal and was moved with compassion for them. 

Gilbert says, Maggie’s “tale includes (but is not limited to) her moving to Nepal, adopting fifty children before she was thirty, opening a school for hundreds more children who had been left impoverished or orphaned after a brutal civil war, starting training and recovery programs for abused women, creating health clinics in a part of the world where health care could not be found, becoming a CNN Hero of the Year, and having to face some of the most brutal and devastating losses and challenges a person could ever endure….And now — even after having survived so much and having created so much — Maggie, like many of us, looks out upon the world with a sense of despair. It…caused her to write a letter from Love — asking…what we are to do when the world feels like it’s crumbling.”

Since I found Maggie’s Letter from Love very moving, I want to share it with you in its entirety.  Maggie’s question:  

Dear Love, what do we do when it feels like the world is crumbling? Where do we find you when we feel buried by grief and hopelessness?

Love’s reply:

Dear Maggie,

There is a very human — but deeply false — notion that I abandon ship when things fall apart. That when tragedy strikes, when the world crumbles and grief closes in, I disappear. I’ll admit, I feel a little misunderstood by this.

My job is not to protect you from pain, shield you from brokenness or answer all your whys.

My role is simply to be here.

As a force, a presence.

A place to return to, hold onto, reach for and expand into.

I am here in grief, in suffering.

In the crumbling.

Even in the moments when you’re convinced I’ve vanished completely.

Grief often gets unfairly tethered to fear, trauma, abandonment, and loneliness.

While I, Love, get lumped in with rainbows, butterflies, giggles, anything chocolate, and long walks on the beach at sunset.

But I live in all places, especially in the rawness and the brokenness.

I was there in the moments you thought you couldn’t go on.

And I will always be right here.

You are so afraid of losing me — so scared, so tangled in worry, waiting for the next heartbreak. So caught up in the questioning, you start to believe I can be diminished and divided. You abandon me in fear that I’ll abandon you.

I’m sorry I can’t answer all your questions. I wish I could.

But I’m not here to explain.

I’m just . . . Love.

Expansive. Inspired. Infinite.

Pure and unmeasurable.

I move you into action. I make you brave. I protect fiercely and soften gently. I am everything good and true — perhaps the last thing in humanity worth holding on to. And I’m always trying to reveal myself.

I’m the first orange streak in every horizon of every new day. I’m the tiny green speck in the plant you swore was dead from the winter. I am the shooting star across a quiet night sky and in the birdsong you heard when you swore the world was over.

I’m the banana bread, the pot of soup, and in your handwritten letters and lists. I’m sipping tea with your best friend by the fireplace. I am on the swing set, and in the laughter and sparkly eyes of every child. I’m the bubble machine, the dance party in the kitchen, every song you’ve ever loved and hand you’ve ever held.

I am every word of kindness and in every radical act of generosity.

But please don’t forget. I am also in the pain.

In the grief. In the suffering.

Because — as you already know — grief is love, too.

You and I may never understand the brokenness.

So let’s focus on what we can do and what we know.

Let yourself see how it’s all carving you.

Chiseling, softening, deepening.

It cracks you open — and from that opening comes mercy and compassion and tenderness.

In allowing yourself to be split open by grief, you become more loving.

More awake. More alive.

And while I can’t tell you why tragedy exists,

I can promise you this:

When you stare into the eyes of suffering —

and choose to transform it into acts of love —

when you choose to love and protect every being and every child as your own —

there is nothing more human.

Nothing more humane.

Nothing more beautiful.

No life more well-lived.

And nothing more me.

I’m not here to explain the pain.

I’m here to help you transform it.

With every moment and every breath, you have a choice.

You can let your grief and hopelessness turn into fear, bitterness, and paralysis.

Or you can let it become a force of radiant love —

A love that moves, acts, builds, feeds, tends, and repairs.

I am kinetic, limitless and expansive, while fear retracts, paralyzes and plays small.

Please choose me.

One small act.

One spark.

One baby step at a time.

I’ll always be right here —

to guide you,

to hold you,

and to remind you:

You are made of me.

I love the way she expresses it in a way that is beautiful, simple, respectful of the depth of the pain and the depth of the love. 

I don’t know what her religious affiliation is, if any.  

Still, when she describes Love saying, “I’m…Expansive. Inspired. Infinite.  Pure and unmeasurable” I have the sense that she’s talking about the same thing that Christians call God, the first person of the Trinity.

When she describes Love saying, “I move you into action.  I make you brave.  I protect fiercely and soften gently….When you stare into the eyes of suffering—and choose to transform it into acts of love, there is nothing more me…..I’ll always be right here—to guide you, to hold you, and to remind you: You are made of me.” I have the sense that she’s talking about the same thing that Christians call the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

When she describes Love saying, “I live in all places, especially in the rawness and the brokenness…Please don’t forget.  I am also in the grief.  In the suffering.”  I have the sense that she’s talking about the same thing that Christians call Jesus who was crucified, the Second person of the Trinity.  

And in the way she describes them, it’s clear that all three of them are Love.  All three of them are One.

She’s not writing an exposition on Christian doctrine and theology and she’s not writing a Creed.  Still, she is writing something that can be valuable to us as Christians.

We’ve got our questions and our doubts.  They come up especially often when it feels like the world is crumbling, when we feel buried by grief and hopelessness.  

It is hard to talk about human suffering and God’s love.  The pat answers feel unsatisfying, and often do more harm than good to people who are already in pain.  It is hard to talk about the crucifixion.  The pat answers feel unsatisfying, and often make God seem barbaric or cruel.

There’s nothing wrong with having questions; I’ve got plenty of my own.  What gets us into trouble is when the questions get so right up in our faces, so right up in front of our eyes, that they block our vision and we don’t see much else, that we miss out on seeing Love.  The more we focus on the questions, the more frustrated we feel.  

This Letter from Love invites us to look at things from a different point of view. We acknowledge the questions; they’re still there.  And we can start from somewhere else.  Do you believe in the existence of Love?  Or if there are moments when even that is too much, do you hope that Love exists?  Do you believe, or even hope, that Love is the first orange streak in every horizon, the shooting star across a quiet night sky, the laughter and sparkly eyes of every child?  Do you believe, or even hope, that Love is Expansive. Inspired. Infinite.  Pure and unmeasurable?

Do you believe that Love is not just rainbows and butterflies, chocolate and long walks on the beach at sunset, but also that Love lives in all places, especially in the rawness and brokenness, that Love was there in the moments you thought you couldn’t go on?  That Love will always be right here?

Do you see the ways in which brokenness is carving you, chiseling, softening, deepening?  That as it cracks you open, from that opening comes mercy and compassion and tenderness?  Do you believe that when you stare into the eyes of suffering and choose to transform it into acts of love, there is nothing more beautiful, nothing more Love?  Do you want your grief and hopelessness to turn into fear, bitterness, and paralysis, or do you want them to become a force of radiant love, a love that moves, acts, builds, feeds, tends, and repairs?  Do you believe, or even hope, that while fear retracts, paralyzes, and plays small, Love is kinetic, limitless and expansive?  Do you want to choose Love, one baby step at a time? 

If so, it can become the lens through which you see Divine Love, which creates the first orange streak in every horizon of every new day, the shooting star, the laughter and sparkly eyes of every child.  

If so, it can become the lens through which you see Divine Love, which is present in a suffering human body on the cross, a human being who continues to love humanity through the worst of human cruelty, to show us that Divine Love is present in all places, especially in the brokenness.

If so, it can become the lens through which you see Divine Love, which is present even in the times when it does not protect you from pain, shield you from brokenness, or answer all your whys.  You can choose Divine Love, which will always be right here—

To guide you,

To hold you,

And to remind you,

You are made of Divine Love.