We love, because we are loved. Eros calls to us from the deepest depths of our worldly existance. Built into the very core of reality is the desire for union, the desire to fall back into oneness.
To enter into union is to step, naked and vulnerable into the holy of holies, the inner sanctum of reality itself.
And while this is our deepest desire it is paradoxically also our deepest fear. We fear this intimacy, because we fear not being worthy, we fear being rejected and abused with our defences down.
The big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of lovers describes the experience for us: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, changing the rules “for me,” nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and also, of course, necessary suffering. This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints.
From Richard Rohr’s daily meditations – 22 October 2023
The secret, the mystery, the sacrament of intimacy that can only be described or likened to the experience of the lover and the beloved, alone at last enjoying the lush garden of each other’s passionate love.
Ultimately this is the call of a wildy passionate erotic divine. Calling you and me into union, into a mystic erotic dance, into perichoretic union.
Now we can only experience it in part, made manifest in the love we share with ourself and with our neighbor. Only by the experience of being the lover can we understand what it means to be the beloved and how deeply, fully and tenderly, the divine wants to embrace us just as we are; With all our human brokenness and frailty.
What is your experience of the outrageous passion of the divine? Share your story in the comments below.
