Love and Forgiveness

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

And the Adorable One is reflected in you - in you being adore-able, able to adore "the perfect man where sinning mortal man appears to mortals," as well as - able to adore - who else? yourself! And not egotistically, but from a position of profound humility, acknowledging that all that you are - all your beautiful being and qualities - all are gifts, the gift of being the reflection of the Adorable One God.

Such an awakening forgives - releases - all dreams of wrong/being wronged, debt/being in debt, trespassing/being trespassed.

And all that is left is... what?

God and you: Love reflecting love.

Hallelujah!

Thinking about forgiveness (Part 2)

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

Accept the forgiveness of God by living it out, by living the unconditional love of Love.

And God's love is unconditional. Jesus said it most beautifully: "He [God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." God's Love shines on everyone, rains down on everyone - equally.

What matters is your response.

Are you willing to love like that? That's how God loves. And He made you in His image and likeness. He made you to be like Him. So it isn't too much of a stretch to think that loving unconditionally is actually your native way of loving.

So be who you really are! Be His loving likeness! And you will awake from the need of forgiveness because you'll be too busy loving like God does: unconditionally.

And rest assured: Love does not ignore evil. It annihilates it. It rips off the mask of egos, of separation, of many (evil) minds, and exposes these as the dream that they really are. Evil is never the reality - but it takes focus and practice to prove this.

Fortunately Jesus left us his supreme example. He repeatedly proved evil's powerlessness. And his resurrection and ascension exposed evil forever as "the liar" that it is.

So if you're feeling the need of forgiveness (and who doesn't!) or of being forgiving (ditto!), wake up to your opportunity to reflect the unconditional love of Love, God! Don't wallow around in hurts and debts and tresspasses! Don't stay asleep in that sometimes way-too-cozy dream of evil! Wake up to God and reflect Him! Let His utterly complete and unconditional joyous love pour into you, cleansing all that guilt away. And let His utterly complete and unconditional love pour right through you, and out to everyone around you, shining His light, His love equally to all.

His Love is always shining, and you are always at the point of opportunity to awake to your real status as His image and likeness. Jesus proved this so you could live this, so you could know God's complete unconditional forgiveness of you - awake - as His perfect reflection.

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." And His Love is always reflected in your-being-Love-made-manifest. Here. Now.

Thinking about forgiveness (Part 1)

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

You are forgiven as you forgive.

Forgiveness happens for you at the moment you forgive another. And you are forgiven in the exact same manner as you forgive another.

So don't wait! Forgive now. And don't be stingy! Forgive generously, completely, whole-heartedly, honestly.

And then be ready. Divine Love will be reflected in love. Your love, your forgiveness of another, will be Divine Love itself moving through you, reflected by you, as you.

You will be forgiven as you forgive. This is Divine Love being reflected in you-as-love-made-manifest.

And Divine Love - made manifest - is the greatest healing force there is in the entire universe.

The completeness of our daily bread

"Give us this day our daily bread"
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion with God, our daily grace, our daily experience of His unconditional Love. That Love feeds all famished affections. ThatLove satisfies all our deepest yearnings. That Love supplies all our true need.

And being filled up full with the Love of God, we have the natural ability to reflect His Love to everyone around us. With our famished affections fed, we awaken to our right to love our neighbor as ourself - to reflect the unconditional love of God to all those famished hearts we see around us.

If our famished affections are fed, we can have no sense of debt or lack or burden of owing or being owed. Because God is awakening us to see that Love forgives all debts by proving there actually are none! Love awakens us from our false witnessing of others (or ourselves!) as lacking, as debtors and tresspassers! And when you receive the incredible Love that is the only source of real forgiveness, you begin to learn how to forgive - love- like God does. And all sense of others owing you vanishes.

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

There is no "you owe me" in the recipe of the Bread of Life! Instead God insists we eliminate that ingredient of a personal sense of indebtedness out of Life. God insists on being reflected completely in us, so that we may not only see others as God already sees them, but (usually harder) see ourselves as He sees us. And right this moment, God sees you (and everyone!) as debtless, flawless, complete, with every need supplied by - who? by Him. Always by Him.

"And lead us not into tempation, but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

And once you've awakened to - glimpsed - your true nature as God's loved image and likeness, do you think you'd fall back into tempation again? Well, maybe. But it becomes increasingly harder, especially as you pray, really pray, the Lord's Prayer.

Praying the Lord's Prayer makes you much more aware of the lies of evil. Why? Because you are tasting your daily Bread of Life. You are tasting the Truth. You are learning what the real meal - the real deal - tastes like. And how satisifying it is. And what a contrast it is to the cheap junk-food evil seems to offer up.

And isn't this then how God leads you? Isn't this how God delivers you from all the Liar's lies: sin, disease, even death? By giving you, through the Lord's Prayer, a taste of your daily Bread, your daily communion with God, your daily experience of God?

And once you taste what God, Love, really is - taste that True Bread - and feel it feeding, awakening, and enlivening you, the contrast is so sharp that you can spot the trial, the temptation - the Liar - a mile away.

So "Give us this day our daily bread." Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections - ours and everyone's. And learn how that Grace forgives and teaches forgiveness, how God loves and reflects love in you, as you. And so know that God will always lead you from trails and deliver you from any sense of evil. Why? Because God actually is the only presence, the only power, the only glory of Life, Truth, and Love there ever was, is, or will be. God is not only over all, He is All.

And you know what? He loves you.

Amen.

Forgive us our debts...

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

Need love? Turn it around! Give Love!

Need friends? Turn it around! Be one! Need to feel appreciated? Appreciate those around you! Need joy? Be grateful!

God's kingdom - His presence, His authority, His love - is already right here where you are. Where? in your heart. In your consciousness.

You intuitively already know this.

Jesus said, "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

So let it out! Let God's Kingdom of Love shine! Let your face be the face of Love-at-work in the world. This is your divine right. This is your natural state of being. No. It's more than that: it is your God-given purpose.

"Forgive us our debts [our lack of Love] as we forgive our debtors [forgive those we think are lacking love for us or for anyone]."
And Love, God, is always reflected in love.

Love is always reflected in love (Part 2)

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

Forgive us our withholding love, as we forgive those who we think have withheld love from us.

There is only one way your lack - debt - of love is paid: it is by being loving. It'll never be paid by withholding it or by being stingy. Divine Love requires reflection - requires that you mirror forth in your life the love that God is pouring out on you non-stop like sunshine.

Love is always a declaration of what is spiritually real and true - right in the face of hate. And withholding love is hateful. Withholding puts you in a position of indebtedness, of lack, of the poverty of absence. Why? because Love is presence. Without it, you have nothing. You have absence. And the absence of Love, is hate.

Just as the presence of Light annihilates darkness, so the presence of Love annihilates hate. This is Love's power. Love's somethingness (abundance) fills that nothingness (debt) called hate just as light does when it enters a dark room. Instantly. Effortlessly. Completely.

Love insists on lighting you up. Love insists on being expressed. Love saves you from the dark indebtedness of withholding love: which is any form of hate. And when you let yourself live Love, its light wipes out that dark indebtedness. You awake to Love's everpresent abundance.

Love is always reflected in love.