Love Does That!

The month of April we spent contemplating Andrew Harvey’s book The Hope:  A Guide to Sacred Activism.  If you have not read it, I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to touch the Sacred as the Source of engaging life meaningfully.

One of the questions I was left with after our engagement with The Hope was: “Can you imagine being a Sacred Activist”? What an amazing challenge this is to even contemplate.  It is a call to ‘wake up’ to who we are – instruments of the Divine in our world today.

We are already Sacred because of the One who indwells us. We live and move and have meaning because we are part of the Divine Imagination.  But we limit ourselves so much.  As one woman said “we can move mountains if we have the faith and imagination to do that.”  We can be so much more than we have dared to imagine.  We can do more than we have dared to imagine is possible.

Harvey asks: “What breaks your heart open?” I pondered this question throughout our immersion in The Hope in April. At first I thought it was about what event, issue, or situation in our world calls me to action.  But in the recent days of contemplation, what I have come to understand is what breaks my heart open is “The Sacred,” the “Divine,” or the 1000 other Names for the Beloved. The language is particular to our belief system, but whatever name we give the Divine, this is what breaks me open and floods me with Joy I can’t contain.

A woman who loves music was moved to talk with her church choir group to go to the homeless and sing!  Someone else was deeply touched by her travels to Central America and founded an organization to be present to the poor.  Another person was so overwhelmed by the grace of Love that she created support groups for our military men and women returning to civilian life after fighting in wars in the Middle East.  And still another felt compassion for a man who had to euthanize his dog, bought a book that was recommended to her by someone else grieving, and gave it as a way to support him.

Love does that as we open to Love– it wells up within each of us so powerfully that we cannot resist being instruments of Love in our world.  What an amazing grace to live into this calling and to share this grace with others whose lives we touch.