God Is Love

"Beloved, let us love one another, because Love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without Love does not know God, for God is Love. In this way, the Love of God was revealed to us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him. In this is Love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins." -[1 John 4: 7-10].

A professor named Leo Buscaglia was a professor at the University of Southern California in the 1960's. After one of his students committed suicide, he said to himself, "What are we doing stuffing facts into people and forgetting they are human beings?"

He began offering a class entitled Love 1A.  Later, Buscaglia wrote a book called, simply, "Love." As he toured the country giving lectures, he spent considerable time after his talks, giving hugs, one by one, to audience members, who lined up for simple human interaction.

During my difficult childhood, I received no Love. No one ever hugged me or said,  "I love you." The first hug and "I love you" that I ever received was when I was 26. I had just met the man who would become my husband. When I blurted out, "I love you", I was immediately afraid that I had done something wrong.

Yes, many "old-school" families did not believe in the "mushy stuff" of tender endearments. But I was also called ugly, a failure, hit, abused, not given necessary medical care, and not fed.

What transpired over a few short years was a total shut-down of my Self.  I began by isolating myself physically in my room. When my mother kicked me outside, saying it was too nice to be indoors, I hid in the deep recesses of a massive forsythia along our front foundation.

Over time, as physically hiding did not make me feel any safer, I started practicing showing no emotion. Still unsafe, I practiced not feeling any emotion-  as if feeling emotions even inside of me could make my humanity visible and therefore render me subject to attack.

Somewhere along the way, I largely stopped eating. Then, I began to rarely sleep. I developed a chronic lung disease, and had difficulty breathing. Ultimately, I stopped speaking. I had given up on Humanity. I had given up on Love.

My life has been a testament to how the lack of Love kills us, body and soul.

It has been a long road back. Early in my healing, I dreamed that I went to a "Self" Store, to buy a new Self. I wish it were that easy.

Children robbed of Love are robbed of Self. From our earliest days, we define ourselves in relationship to others. The smell, the sound, the sight, the feeling of our loved ones -- the first such loved one being Mother- delineate for us where we end and where others begin. A child still in the womb can identify the voice of the mother carrying her. Once the bay is born and outside the womb, the mother's voice can soothe the child because already, the voice is so very familiar.

What it means to be human is to Love. When we meet our Life's partner, we behave much the same way, in delight with the scent, the sight, the sound of our Loved One. Our heart quickens at their presence, and we want to envelope ourselves in their arms.

Leo Buscaglia said, "To live in love is to live in life, and to live in life is to live in love." It was only when I met and fell in Love with my husband that I really came back to life.

Life begins in and with Love. A life without Love is a descent into a living Hell, a kind of Death. But Love endangers a miraculous blossoming of spirit and soul. Love is literally life-giving and life-saving.

I have spent countless hours asking how my own family could have treated me that way? I suppose that I can never really know. Except that as children, my own parents did not receive the kind of Love which I longed for, either. They never really knew Love themselves. And they never knew, or believed in God. For them, it was a dog-eat-dog world. There was nothing, or No One, larger than themselves. What did Love have to do with it?

And yet, "The desire for God is written upon the human heart." -[Catholic Catechism]. And God IS Love. So, therefore, as we long for God, so we long for Love. And as we long for Love, we may well be longing for that Infinitely deep Love that only God is capable of. Because as perfect as human Love can be, it has its limits.

The capacity for Love may be demonstrated -- or not -- by our parents. But our lives begin, begotten by God, innately capable of Love. The seeds for Love and for God are planted within us at birth. The question is, whether we will accept and nurture them; or turn our backs and let them wither away?

To know Love is to know God. To know God is to know Love.

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