[4 minute read]
What might we *do* to nurture lovingness?
Be curious.
Humbly curious. Not comparatively curious. We think that’s hard because it’s impossible not to filter through our own experience that which another person shares. So don’t resist that. Curiosity about another also yields self knowledge.
“Humbly” curious means not judging. As you take in what another does or says, don’t *judge* it. Judgment is terminal. It stops the receiving and the loving. Don’t compare what you are hearing or feeling against any artificial ideal or standard of goodness, right, or wrong. Just receive.
Listen with exquisite attention. It is an act of loving. And it is a unique act. In that moment, a condition never to happen again, and which has never happened before. That moment is sacred. Be in it with intense curiosity.
When the beloved gives a seeming conclusive answer, don’t accept it easily as terminal. Let your loving curiosity continue to flow in, through, and around that answer. Ask more. More curiosity. This is a sacred moment, and sacred means deep, tense, dense, heavy. The fullness of who and what we are.
If/when you are being humbly curious and loving, it won’t feel comfortable for you and the beloved, but it won’t be resented or regretted either. Trust your heart to know when your beloved needs you to stop your curious inquiry. If/when you are being curious and loving with enough humility, your heart will do that calculus without requiring your conscious mind. It is our nature. More than anything else is our nature.
Curiosity is what the best of therapists practice. When we think of the phrase “Divine Physician,” we think of Yeshua healing physical maladies. Those kinds of dis-eases are easiest for us to grasp by our conscious minds. They are a sort of first step into the invisible and mysterious. They are sacramental—visible signs of reality unseeable. Inside the body. Surgery. Medicine that acts on our insides. Mysterious.
[If you believe that we understand how most medicines work, you are largely mistaken. We don’t. We can explain some bits of that, but I would contend that in no case do we understand all the bits. If we did, designer drugs would be everywhere.]
The Divine Physician heals the least visible parts of a person. The most mysterious. Be most curious about that. That’s how you can be a healer too. In the image and likeness. The mind of Christ.
Combat and shed any notions of God as omniscient and omnipotent. Those notions speak to your ego, not to your soul. You may think they are notions of glory and praise to God. I don’t. They terminate curiosity. Our curiosity about how God loves us, and our curiosity about how we can love God. They terminate those curious possibilities.
If we are made in God’s image and likeness, then we should look inside for what fuels loving. Curiosity and mystery. Not conclusions. Being. Not having-been.
If you want to ascribe some infinite attributes to God, I suggest infinite curiosity.
How could an all-knowing God be infinitely curious about us?
Well, to me, that answer lies in why we are created in God’s image and likeness.
I believe God to be furiously and passionately and INFINITELY curious about every single one of God’s creatures. I believe God revels in the mystery of every thing that God creates.
Curiosity and mystery always come with some disruptive, disturbing tension that is also a liberating excitement about being. To be disturbed is to be awakened from sleep.
I don’t think God ever sleeps.
Rise up and walk.
Awaken to your intrinsic curiosity.
Be. And you can love.
Walk, and you will love.
.
Neil D. 2020-05-20
Related: Love Is Not a Noun (2). What IS Love?
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