A gentle drawing inward

Progress or growth in our spiritual lives has a lot to do with our habits and disposition.  Our habits speak to the concrete ways that we put our commitments into action.  Changing our habits is the first step toward integrity and alignment, in which we move away from being the kind of person who is good at making promises but then does not follow through.  Many of the habits we need to adopt do take considerable effort on our part.  Other habits have to do with noticing, allowing, making ourselves available to the movements of God in and around us, availing ourselves of the graces that God extends to us, and integrating them into our being.  These latter habits speak to our disposition of being open to grace, open to God’s work in us, not just to doing all the things that we can and ought to do ourselves.

            Attending to the work of God in us takes solitude and time.  It is a relational attunement that Teresa describes as an inward turn:

One noticeably senses a gentle drawing inward, as anyone who goes through this will observe, like a hedgehog curling up or a turtle drawing into its shell.

This drawing inward does not last forever, and it does not mean that the only way to find connection with God is within ourselves. But it does suggest strongly that if we seek, in any way, to be instruments of God’s light and love, we shall need a deepening experiential knowledge of the many ways that it transforms us.  We cannot teach or share what we do not know intimately.  It is this growing familiarity, even intimacy with God, that Teresa encourages us to experience, so that we will truly know the tender touch of the divine hand and be healed, changed, and empowered.

How will you be drawn gently inward today?

Do what best stirs you to love

The more experience of God we have, the harder it is for us not to notice the same thing about God that 1 John observes: God is love.  Teresa teaches this truth in a variety of ways, asking us, first and foremost, not simply to take her (or anyone’s) word for it, but to reach toward God and see for ourselves.  In fact, she teaches that, after a certain point, we cannot know God if we continue to approach God abstractly or within the categories of divinity that we have been taught.  As we grow toward God, a complete openness to letting God be God and letting God teach us who God is will be necessary.  

If this approach seems a bit daunting, she provides a simple formula: 

In order to profit by this path and ascend to the dwelling places we desire, the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.  

In counseling this, Teresa is not saying that we should set aside our intellects or any of the capacities we have as creative, integrative thinkers.  What she is saying, I think, is that love creates a more expansive space in which to encounter God, to taste God, to know God, to be changed by God.  Love is what enables a genuine partnership with God to be formed and then to begin to flourish.  

Teresa is asking us to habituate ourselves to love—to make love our habit, our default position.  When we are faced with choices and decisions, she advises us to choose what feeds and fosters love in us, for love energizes us for all that we are called to do in our lives.  We will need love’s stirring for the path ahead, wherever it takes us.  If we do not become dedicated students of love’s ways, we will not make further progress in our journey of growth toward God.

Love is always stirring about

Love, by definition, is not static.  It is always other-directed.  It is the energy that moves us away from the self and away from pettiness and smallness of character.  Love creates generosity and largesse, in us and in our societies.  Teresa tells us that Love is always stirring about, seeing what it can do; it cannot contain itself.  I hold that love, where present, cannot possibly be content with remaining always the same.

Teresa asks us to prioritize love because love’s energy always creates new possibilities.  The action of love teaches us what we most need to know, about ourselves, about one another, and about our world.  To become jaded about love is to sink into a miserly existence and face a very dark future. 

It is important to keep ourselves directly attuned to the source of love.  In human life, many relationships fall short of life-giving love, and this can cause us pain and anguish.  Sometimes, in order to keep ourselves from feeling this pain, we adopt strategies: we withdraw, we become aggressive, we begin to use other people for selfish interests.  And in this way, we perpetuate many of the world’s false messages about love.  It is precisely in our moments of pain, grief, loss that we need the healing vitality of genuine love.  

When one avenue to love in our lives closes, our task is to recognize that it was and is only a small echo of a far greater love—a love that spiritual writer Henri Nouwen calls our “first love,” which precedes all human love.  This is the love of God, which corrects all false loves, enhances all life-giving love, and teaches us what true love is.  This love “changes everything” because it desires and supports our continual growth in goodness, in hope, in generosity, in dignity, and in justice.  Invested in our continual improvement, how could such a love possibly remain always the same?

#TeresaofAvila  #love #generosity #goodness #spirituality #change #healing #HenriNouwen