Love From Above

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." - Mother Theresa When I think about what really brings me into the heart of the Christmas season it is usually a story about how unfathomable love prevailed against great adversity. One such story that still tears me up and reminds me of the depths to which love is capable is of a mother with a terminal illness who made the conscious, heart rendering choice to find foster homes for all of her children before she died. Most of us can only imagine, and wince at the pain she went through. Yet the beautiful paradox revealed by this story is how human love can come up against its limits, endure great pain, and be transmuted into extraordinary love. Who would have blamed this mother if she found it unbearable to release her children to new parents and clutched them to her side until her last breath. But this mother knew about a higher love that would outlive her suffering and the suffering of her children.  She accepted the inevitable, though devastating, reality that her physical presence as their mother would soon end.  She found a way to endure this reality and the pain of releasing her children by tapping into a greater love, a love that would continue to live and love long after her human heart could not. This is our great challenge if we are to ever really know the high form of love that is possible; the divine love which Jesus embodied and demonstrated in his life on earth.  The hardest part of love is in letting go.  The reason it is so difficult is that when we love humanly we get attached to people and we cling to them being a certain way. Their being or acting a certain way constitutes our love of them. Of course when we are aware of this tendency we realize that we are never really loving a person, but loving our image of them, our expectations, and the mandate we have placed on our love for them. Ouch, you say! Yes, this is a painful awareness. It stings to realize that our love is not as pure as we imagined. But you and I are capable of a truer form of love; love that is seeded in our souls and available to our hearts if we are open and willing to know it.  It begins by letting go of conditional love. It will  take extraordinary willingness to release clinging to preferences of how others should be. But as with the mother who endured the pain of separation from her children, we too can tap into a love that connects us deeper and wider with no limits of time or space by releasing our ideals for other people.   Unconditional love is demanding, but it gives more than it asks of us. Ultimately it's about allowing a lesser love to die so that eternal love can be born. Jesus demonstrated this lesson at the end of his life as well. Though he might have clung to his preferences for his life on earth, a deeper wisdom allowed him to release the form that would only limit his expression of love. He released limitations and unleashed the power of a love so great that to this day we can be reborn by its power made manifest in us.  Divine love is more than a heavenly ideal, but a real possibility for mothers who have transcended ordinary love and those of us who would follow.