Valentine's Day

To love another person is to see the face of God

- Victor Hugo

Softly, an effervescent light dawns, awakening love's sleeping presence. Then, sparkling in the eyes of the beloved, this new love lures the couple's submission, as Cupid's arrow pierces all their defensive layers, to its den of light. This powerful, intoxicating love is only a teaspoon from the ocean of God's great universal love. It is a taste of divine love.  As these two surrender to each other, open and trusting, love magically flows, transforming time and space, changing their lives forever.

Jesus said whenever two or more are gathered in His name, He is there.  He is love as God is love and so our very human love is a touch of God's very presence within and among us.

Valentinus, c.100 AD, a great teacher and poet of the Gnostic tradition, understood perhaps more than others about the power of God's love to transform our mundane human experience in this illusionary experience of life. He taught that it is only through the heart that we enter into relationship with God and each other.  In less sentimental language, he espoused through poetry the means to open the inner chambers of the heart and enter the gateway to heaven.

As this is Valentine's Day, named for the Valentine who trumpeted romantic love, it is an awesome coincidence that this greatest of all should-have-been pope's mystical theology brings us face to face, heart to heart with each other in our pursuit of something more loving, more divine, in our escape from this transitory realm of pain and darkness. All love offers us that escape. 

An interesting thing about romantic love is that it is not only the beloved's love that gives us love.  It just feels like that. Rather, it is our own love we feel which the other invites or calls forth from us.  The other also experiences his own love drawn from the divine well within him which he trades for our love. While it is an exchange, it is also the same substance drawn from our two wells that we share. For both, is one's own love, buried within,  that is drawn out by the other whom we so dearly cherish.  It is in sharing our love that we are able to experience it at all.

When our beloved is gone, sadly the light dims in our heart, and we are sorely tempted to close up shop. But, the love was not his love to give in the first place.  It was always ours, called forth by his open invitation, his enamored need and plea to be graced by the love he saw dancing in our eyes as they met his. It was light from light, love from love, that drew us together into the most gorgeous dance of life. 

It is no wonder that love, romantic love in particular, is a frequent visitor to people who also dearly love God. It is a dusting of the divine that so often brings us to our knees and often to the altar.

Lent's dark night

His disciples questioned him, (and) they said to him:
"Do you want us to fast?
And how should we pray and give alms?
And what diet should we observe?"

Jesus says: "Do not lie. And do not do what you hate.
For everything is disclosed in view of truth.
For there is nothing hidden that will not become revealed.
And there is nothing covered that will remain undisclosed." *

You are all so amazing. You are more joyous, more radiant and wise than you could possibly imagine.  You are an unlimited, radiant, powerfully creative, free and loving eternal spirit.  There is no end to you.  You contain within you the most incredible diamondesque radiance, a light which is both wisdom and power, love and infinite knowledge. 

And, that's not all.  It's only just a glimpse of who you really are.  You are boundless and within your own inner being you contain the entire universe and in that infinity you can and will experience your own self as also unlimited and a joy beyond anything you know today. You will also encounter each other in new and more fully expansive and loving ways. When (if) we attain ascension consciousness in this life, you will remember your life and the others you knew in this life.  You will live eternally either way, but you will remember your life here if you enter it while you're living. 

So, what does that have to do with Lent? 

Imagine you plant a little seed in the Earth and you water it everyday, knowing that the potential in that seed is a beautiful tree.  Everyday you watch it, consider the tree it will be one day, water it and protect it.  Meanwhile the tiny seed it gestating in the earth, responding to the water it's getting, and slowly it puts out a root and then another, and then eventually it sends up a shoot which then greens after a little while above ground in response to the sun's warmth. 

Lent is like that.  You contain within you your real spiritual self, the eternal seed which contains all that is most beautiful in the universe.  During Lent, you water it, you protect it, and watch it and you learn about it.  Then, finally, after a 40-day gestation period, your newly Christed self is born and you are resurrected spiritually as Christ Himself was.  It's Easter and you are reborn.

That's the idea anyway.  So, now, what does sacrifice have to do with this?

It has nothing to do with this, which is why Jesus somewhat dismisses the question posed to him by his disciples.  His response is simple and yet profound. "Do not lie and do not do what you hate."  Isn't that what most of us do?  Don't we all lie and don't we all do what we hate?  Yet, we don't know it because we're all in denial about who we are.  We don't know who we are.  We are all enslaved to the world.  We are feasting at the world's table while Christ is calling us all to the Great Banquet.  The world's table is a lie and we are doing it and we hate it.  We just don't know it because we don't know anything better.  But, there is something so much better.

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says:

Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and outside of you."
"When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known,
and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father.
But if you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty."  

And, in Luke, Jesus says, "a good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart .... For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks." (Luke 6:15)

And, in the Gospel of John is the famous nightime conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus in which he says that unless we are "born again," we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. (John 3: 3)

That "born again," is the birth of your true self, your own personal resurrection, your own birthing of your true self out of the dark night of your own life.  Easter is the very real birth of your true self, your Christed self as it is the resurrection of Jesus, which is what he is calling us - his own disciples of today - to do also. 

Lent is that time of gestating.  It has nothing to do with abstaining from chocolate or wearing ashes on your forehead.  It has everything to do with prayer, meditation, studying and challenging yourself in every way to be more authentic, to bring forth what is in you.  You may find that by uncovering your creative talents, you may find some inner tools to help you dig deeper.  It is a very deep dig, but with the help of the Holy Spirit it can be done.  

This is not easy and every year we once again consciously try again, begin again, remember again that this may be the only thing really worth doing in life. Yet, Christ is there, He is very alive and very there and is able to help you.  He is calling.  He is knocking and if we even limp toward the door of our heart, He will help us open it to our true selves, to eternal life, to Him and eternity. 

P.S.  I'm not saying I'm there, but, I am saying that I'm working on it, just like you are.  The hardest temptation though is doing Lent and not getting sucked into the whole sacrificial mindset that only forces us further down and farther away from our true destination.

*THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS;
TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN J. PATTERSON AND JAMES M. ROBINSON