This came today in Richard Rohr’s daily email. It is part of the transcript from a talk Ilia Delio gave at the 2014 CAC CONSPIRE. Along with being a Ph.D. scientist and theologian, Ilia Delio is one of my favourite thinkers and spiritual writers.
As I read her comments, I was aware of a stirring and excitement within me. Such a deep sense of comfort, I suppose in the exact way I needed it at the time of my writing this. I thought maybe there might be others who would like to read and reflect on this as well.
Ilia said:
“Everything that exists speaks of God reflects that love energy of God. But God is more than anything that exists. God is always the more of our lives. We can’t contain God. If we try to control God, that’s not God; God always spills over our lives. So, God is our future. If we’re longing for something we desire, it’s that spilled-over love of our lives that’s pulling us onward, that’s luring us into something new. But we don’t trust this God [of implanted desire] often. We were pretty sure that God’s there, [and] we're here, and we just need to keep [on] the straight and narrow path. . . .
What Francis [of Assisi] recognized is God is in every direction. That you might arrive, you might not arrive. You might arrive late; you might arrive early. It’s not the arrival that counts. It’s God! It's not the direction that counts. It's just being there, trusting that you will be going where God wants you. In other words, God is with us. Every step of the way is God-empowered love energy. But we tend to break down and start controlling things: “If I go this way, I'm going to get lost. Well, what if it's wrong? What will happen to me?” Well, what will happen to you? Something will happen. But guess what? Something’s going to happen whether or not you go; that’s the whole point of life. So, it’s all about love.
So, it’s not like we’ve got this, “Here’s God; here’s us. God’s just waiting till we get our act together, and then we’ll all be well.” That’s a boring God; that's not even God. God is alive. God is love. Love is pulling us on to do new things. We need to trust the power of God in our lives to do new things. . . . We need to unwire ourselves to recognize that the God of Jesus Christ is, you might say, the power beneath our feet, the depth of the beauty of everything that exists, and the future into which we are moving. . . .
Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love."
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Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
