Thank you, once again! I was married for 48 years and the marriage was not ideal. How and why we stayed together is one of the great unknowns. But when he died 4 years ago, I felt that my world had ended. Our love for each other was not romantic, it was sometimes traumatic, and I felt like I had to be somebody else in order to be what he could live with. When he died, I had to figure out who I really was underneath all that denial and pain. The new me is evolving and sometimes God says, Nope! Try again, but it’s getting easier. (Sometimes).
I use these quotes a lot!
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
I have always struggled with the beauty of this scripture in the midst of the truth of human relationships. I appreciate your sermon today on this..it has given me more to see and know. I so live from his place of adapting to others perceived ideals of who I am in hopes of being loved..because how could anyone truly love me without me bending into a pretzel to become more digestible. And the pain of this leaves a version of myself that is living from a place of scarcity and mistrust of myself and others. It has been a life long struggle to overcome and derails me at every turn. I want to breathe in these words until there is no edge between my breath and the truth of this love. I will print what you have written here so I can revisit when I forget and I will forget until I don’t anymore. In gratitude for you and for the love of God evermore.
Oh, my. What a beautiful description of love — and a true description of how a chapter from First Corinthians has been misused in weddings! Nadia, you have done an excellent job of comparing “Hallmark Card Love” with “the love a thousand schlocky weddings can’t kill.” Thank you for getting my Sunday off to a good start. ❤️
Well, Nadia, you channeled God's Grace to me this morning - again. As if we'd been talking for the last months about my doubts and pain. Thank you for being so open to God.
About three weeks ago, I had a dream. It was the night before a trip to stay with a grandchild while their parents went on a vacation. In the dream I was conversing with a man to whom I was not related, but I had had affection for before his marriage to another. As we were about to go our own ways, I felt the need to express that I was disappointed that our relationship had not continued…and immediately the question came from somewhere, why bring that up, what are you trying to seed or manipulate?
I have thought about that dream and what my subconscious was trying to say…now I am home again.
I spent two weeks in a judgement filled atmosphere, sometimes directed at me…mostly seen in the interactions with the 21 year old grandchild.
Seeing how judgements and the expression of them forms the ability of another to relate to the universe and society around them, is painful.
The love, required to continually balance a situation by seeing the seeds of light present there also, is not easy. But your sharing today strengthens my need to try.
This is just what I needed today in so many ways! What strikes me today, as I am trying to reconcile with a sibling, are these lines. "Do we transmit our pain or do we transform our pain? Do we spread it or do we revolutionize it?" and then "Free to see ourselves and others as God sees us. Because loved people love people." when I put this together with all the beautifully written truth, perhaps reconciliation is possible. But maybe more than that, I can let go and see her as she is-as God sees her, and love her as she is to the best of my human ability and not let her perception of me, twist me into anyone other than someone deeply loved as I am. I am going to be working on transforming my pain. Thank you Nadia
God, given to me at the moment when I really need them. This sermon hit at just the right moment. I have this bible passage framed on a wall in my bedroom. In my 20 year marriage I often referred to it and reminded myself that to love, I needed to be patient and all-kind, to endure wrongs and forgive endlessly. It was exhausting. I made myself smaller to make room for loving this way.
Last month my husband left me and I have been struggling with thinking “this Bible passage is bullshit, look where it got me.” Now I understand- it was never about me and the love I give. It’s about the love we receive from God, so much more than we can ever comprehend.
Thank you Nadia for opening my eyes, softening my heart, and lifting the guilt from my head. I can feel God more clearly now.
Hi Nadia, thank you for the beautiful message and lifting the “wedding” passage to where it fits. I appreciate you saying these statements describe God, not romantic love’s fickleness. God remains. God is with us.
Your encouragement cuts through all the b.s. and I’m so grateful for you. Thank you for your courage to work through your pain and share your gifts so generously. Xo
This is so beautiful! Thank you for expanding a common quote and Bible verse into something deeply profound and moving.
I remember Richards’s quote about pain that is not transformed is transmitted. It’s a powerful quote, and I always wanted to write to him and ask him…but how does one do this?
How do I move from transmitting to transforming? Because without further guidance, the quote left me feeling a bit lost and shameful that I couldn’t magically transform the pain.
I’ve since found the transformative way through somatic counseling, CoDa, and ACA.
And through meditations like yours and Richard’s, I’m beginning to sink deeper into God’s radical love for myself and others.
Thank you for this powerful Word. I can identify with hiding parts of myself to avoid rejection. And then believing in the illusion of the Public Relations man. It took me a while to figure out it’s a dead end, and accept Acceptance. This then flows to others…
“Because loved people love people. How radical, to move through this place and see each person, resident and CO alike, as God sees them. Not because they are good, but because they are loved.”
It looks to me like the love that will be going on for me in my own in this lifetime is limited to that between me and my beloved cats. My attempts at a romantic partnership have all been short lived disasters. I'm coming to a place of acceptance about this. What I know is that I am getting better at feeling God's love. Because of that, I'm getting better at loving the people in my life. My good friends, my beloved niece and nephew, my mother and sister despite the difficulties in our relationships, and my neighbors (not physical neighbors - just other people in the world). And maybe that can be enough. As long as there are cats in my lap.
We are known because we are loved, that is a beautiful thought to ponder, peace giving. I feel that in human to human relationships and our connection with the Divine, both remain true. We are known because we are loved and loved because we are known. God loves me and so he knows me in this deep indescribable way. And knowing me even in my weaknesses gives him joy in that he gets to keep loving me. "God loves me because he knows me" feels so much better in my body and spirit than "God sees the horrible, dirty, sinful person you are and loves you anyway." You know, it kinda relates in my mind to this concept of how women are sometimes told to compromise and accept less love than they deserve. Many women have been hesitant to leave abusive relationships, relationships where they are not fully honored for many reasons, one often being words spoken to them and sometimes then reflected within their own utterances about how they wouldn't be able to do any better, they are flawed physically and/or emotionally and they are lucky hubby or boyfriend wants to stay with a 'fat, messed up, emotional, poor, etc....woman like them'. This concept of "God loves you even though you are scum" opens the door to acceptance of abuse, of thinking we don't deserve better. Knowing even a piece of what it means to be truly loved by God can show us that it is ok to expect true love in our relationships and to love ourselves.
Thank you, once again! I was married for 48 years and the marriage was not ideal. How and why we stayed together is one of the great unknowns. But when he died 4 years ago, I felt that my world had ended. Our love for each other was not romantic, it was sometimes traumatic, and I felt like I had to be somebody else in order to be what he could live with. When he died, I had to figure out who I really was underneath all that denial and pain. The new me is evolving and sometimes God says, Nope! Try again, but it’s getting easier. (Sometimes).
I use these quotes a lot!
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)
I have always struggled with the beauty of this scripture in the midst of the truth of human relationships. I appreciate your sermon today on this..it has given me more to see and know. I so live from his place of adapting to others perceived ideals of who I am in hopes of being loved..because how could anyone truly love me without me bending into a pretzel to become more digestible. And the pain of this leaves a version of myself that is living from a place of scarcity and mistrust of myself and others. It has been a life long struggle to overcome and derails me at every turn. I want to breathe in these words until there is no edge between my breath and the truth of this love. I will print what you have written here so I can revisit when I forget and I will forget until I don’t anymore. In gratitude for you and for the love of God evermore.
Oh, my. What a beautiful description of love — and a true description of how a chapter from First Corinthians has been misused in weddings! Nadia, you have done an excellent job of comparing “Hallmark Card Love” with “the love a thousand schlocky weddings can’t kill.” Thank you for getting my Sunday off to a good start. ❤️
Well, Nadia, you channeled God's Grace to me this morning - again. As if we'd been talking for the last months about my doubts and pain. Thank you for being so open to God.
About three weeks ago, I had a dream. It was the night before a trip to stay with a grandchild while their parents went on a vacation. In the dream I was conversing with a man to whom I was not related, but I had had affection for before his marriage to another. As we were about to go our own ways, I felt the need to express that I was disappointed that our relationship had not continued…and immediately the question came from somewhere, why bring that up, what are you trying to seed or manipulate?
I have thought about that dream and what my subconscious was trying to say…now I am home again.
I spent two weeks in a judgement filled atmosphere, sometimes directed at me…mostly seen in the interactions with the 21 year old grandchild.
Seeing how judgements and the expression of them forms the ability of another to relate to the universe and society around them, is painful.
The love, required to continually balance a situation by seeing the seeds of light present there also, is not easy. But your sharing today strengthens my need to try.
This is just what I needed today in so many ways! What strikes me today, as I am trying to reconcile with a sibling, are these lines. "Do we transmit our pain or do we transform our pain? Do we spread it or do we revolutionize it?" and then "Free to see ourselves and others as God sees us. Because loved people love people." when I put this together with all the beautifully written truth, perhaps reconciliation is possible. But maybe more than that, I can let go and see her as she is-as God sees her, and love her as she is to the best of my human ability and not let her perception of me, twist me into anyone other than someone deeply loved as I am. I am going to be working on transforming my pain. Thank you Nadia
I feel like Nadia’s words are a gift from
God, given to me at the moment when I really need them. This sermon hit at just the right moment. I have this bible passage framed on a wall in my bedroom. In my 20 year marriage I often referred to it and reminded myself that to love, I needed to be patient and all-kind, to endure wrongs and forgive endlessly. It was exhausting. I made myself smaller to make room for loving this way.
Last month my husband left me and I have been struggling with thinking “this Bible passage is bullshit, look where it got me.” Now I understand- it was never about me and the love I give. It’s about the love we receive from God, so much more than we can ever comprehend.
Thank you Nadia for opening my eyes, softening my heart, and lifting the guilt from my head. I can feel God more clearly now.
Hi Nadia, thank you for the beautiful message and lifting the “wedding” passage to where it fits. I appreciate you saying these statements describe God, not romantic love’s fickleness. God remains. God is with us.
Your encouragement cuts through all the b.s. and I’m so grateful for you. Thank you for your courage to work through your pain and share your gifts so generously. Xo
"The point of love is not that it wins, but that it loves." --Street
This is so beautiful! Thank you for expanding a common quote and Bible verse into something deeply profound and moving.
I remember Richards’s quote about pain that is not transformed is transmitted. It’s a powerful quote, and I always wanted to write to him and ask him…but how does one do this?
How do I move from transmitting to transforming? Because without further guidance, the quote left me feeling a bit lost and shameful that I couldn’t magically transform the pain.
I’ve since found the transformative way through somatic counseling, CoDa, and ACA.
And through meditations like yours and Richard’s, I’m beginning to sink deeper into God’s radical love for myself and others.
🙏🏻
This is so beautiful and so true. Grateful for you, NBW.
Thank you for this powerful Word. I can identify with hiding parts of myself to avoid rejection. And then believing in the illusion of the Public Relations man. It took me a while to figure out it’s a dead end, and accept Acceptance. This then flows to others…
“Because loved people love people. How radical, to move through this place and see each person, resident and CO alike, as God sees them. Not because they are good, but because they are loved.”
Nadia, how I needed to hear these words today.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
(And I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to like camping 🤗That one really hit home!
It looks to me like the love that will be going on for me in my own in this lifetime is limited to that between me and my beloved cats. My attempts at a romantic partnership have all been short lived disasters. I'm coming to a place of acceptance about this. What I know is that I am getting better at feeling God's love. Because of that, I'm getting better at loving the people in my life. My good friends, my beloved niece and nephew, my mother and sister despite the difficulties in our relationships, and my neighbors (not physical neighbors - just other people in the world). And maybe that can be enough. As long as there are cats in my lap.
We are known because we are loved, that is a beautiful thought to ponder, peace giving. I feel that in human to human relationships and our connection with the Divine, both remain true. We are known because we are loved and loved because we are known. God loves me and so he knows me in this deep indescribable way. And knowing me even in my weaknesses gives him joy in that he gets to keep loving me. "God loves me because he knows me" feels so much better in my body and spirit than "God sees the horrible, dirty, sinful person you are and loves you anyway." You know, it kinda relates in my mind to this concept of how women are sometimes told to compromise and accept less love than they deserve. Many women have been hesitant to leave abusive relationships, relationships where they are not fully honored for many reasons, one often being words spoken to them and sometimes then reflected within their own utterances about how they wouldn't be able to do any better, they are flawed physically and/or emotionally and they are lucky hubby or boyfriend wants to stay with a 'fat, messed up, emotional, poor, etc....woman like them'. This concept of "God loves you even though you are scum" opens the door to acceptance of abuse, of thinking we don't deserve better. Knowing even a piece of what it means to be truly loved by God can show us that it is ok to expect true love in our relationships and to love ourselves.
"...loved people love people." I love that.