I found this one in a Q and A column by Bishop John Shelby Spong that I receive in my e-mail. (Should anyone wish to contact me via that e-mail, you’ll reach me at: jimphilipps@juno.com). Here’s what Bishop Spong wrote: “Love is a power that enables us to journey beyond the boundaries of the human and to embrace that which is transcendent. Love always manifests itself in enhanced life.”
One of the things I’m noticing as I get older is that even though I’m reading and learning more and more each year in my chosen vocation of Theology (probably closer to the truth to say the vocation chose me) I feel like I know less and less. Now, this probably isn’t senility as I’m not quite 50 yet. But it might be an experience of the limitations of Knowing – at its’ best, I think, our intellects can lead us to asking penetrating questions which open us up to the presence of the Mystery at the root of all that exists. Having brought us to that shoreline, however, it can’t take us much further into the limitless ocean.
But Love can – because that Mystery which we commonly call God IS Love. So whenever we experience love ourselves or extend it, we are – somehow – swimming in that ocean. And the experience is always beyond the words.
Now, since I am a person who makes his living with words, I find this truth to be quite frustrating. But on the rare occasions that I can get out of my own way, I realize that although the experience is beyond words, a genuine experience of Love always leaves one changed – “bigger” than he or she was before.
Could that be a way of looking at eternal life? That at some point if one swims in that ocean which is Love long enough, he/she becomes so “big” that the limits of mortal life can no longer contain that person?
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