How do you celebrate traditional holidays as an interfaith couple? My husband Daniel, a secular humanist, and I, a contemplative mystic, left Christian evangelicalism a few years ago. This Advent series has allowed us to explore and articulate what is still meaningful to both of us about the holidays.
We’ve covered various traditions, astrophysics, deconstruction, Dr. Who, holiday grief, and reckoning with the existence of war in our time… what does any of this have to do with the theme of the fourth week of Advent, which is love?
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What is Love?
In the deconstruction movement, contrary to what some may think, you won’t just find a bunch of hurting people, angry with the church, spewing hatred in an attempt to display or feel more powerful in the face of their grief. Anger, which informs and protects, must be validated, of course. And in that safe place, an invitation exists which we’ve seen many people embrace and respond positively to, effectively moving themselves beyond hurt and into a space of learning. In deconstruction, invitation is often found in asking two questions: 1) What do they mean by that? and 2) If not this, then what?
The Bible says God is love. What do they mean by that? Many of us can identify some harm done to us in the name of Christian love. A certain punishment from when we were children can stick with us as a formative memory for decades if not our entire lifetime, informing how “love” was administered to us corporally. Conservative Evangelical Mennonite fundamentalism is rife with the “tough love” mindset, and even though the concept of relational boundaries is thought to be a newfound (New Age) and heretical idea to some, the idea of excommunication was and continues to be a staple in many churches. Even speaking the truth “in love” is brandished as a umbrella justification, both sword and shield, licensing one to be judge, jury and executioner.
Certainly, the Bible articulates many softer and kinder sides of love (1 Corinthians 13, et al.). However you study it, the Biblical definition seems to contribute to an ideology that some Christian sects have always managed to take to the extreme. And it is these fundamentalist extremes that end up justifying harm, even killing in the name God. Genocide in the name of what is arguably “love”, is what we are seeing in the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestine today, the most recent horror in a long line of supposedly “Christian” holy wars.
If there aren’t many things to easily agree upon these days, perhaps this writer can ask for one thing, that we need a new way to talk about God? And if we need a new way to talk about God, we need a new way to talk about love.
So then what is love?
To me, love is that which connects. I hold this definition loosely and I measure it from time to time with what I am learning about God/dess, love, and the universe. I measure it with my mind, heart, and felt-sense and while I do not find as easy a definition for what I now believe of love’s opposite (for it can be useful to define something by its opposite, which in this case is evil or hate) – love as that which connects makes the most sense to me.
Love, like God/dess, is not easy to define. The Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, points out how there is no language that would meet love’s meaning, and compares the process of attempting to define love to “a donkey stuck in mud”. As to the question I ask, what is love, he writes:
“Do not ask of such concepts.
(Dīvân-e Shams, 2733)
You will understand when you become like me
When it invites you to its feast”.
In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, social researcher Brené Brown says, “Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”
The Bible records Jesus in Matthew 22:30 and 31 explaining how the most important commandments are about love. “…and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength… You must love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
Love myself? But didn’t that go against what I’d been taught as a Christian? Wasn’t that the definition of selfishness? How could self love be part of the greatest commandments taught by Jesus?
Unfortunately, self love is another concept that is often lost to the twisted game of religious fundamentalist and literal wordplay.
In times of my greatest isolation, once the fear subsided, I turned inward to study what was left. I found myself acknowledging that although marriage, family and community were benefits to me, all I really could count on experiencing was already inside me. My way of being in the world, my unique collection of star dusts flying in close formation, my understanding of having a close and personal relationship (or being One) with the Divine, my Self… it was all I had.
For me, as I extended curiousity, goodwill and acceptance to myself, I experienced an attachment to the Source of all matter and energy that I could interact with and cultivate. Was this what it meant to love my self? I felt less alone. Whether derided or lauded as construct, my connection to God/dess helped me feel seen and loved. It lessened my suffering and helped me be able to begin to extend that same curiousity, goodwill, acceptance and desire to lessen suffering to others. Is that what it means to love your neighbour?
Religion, art, science – none of it has cornered the market on how best to live a life of love. Dressed up in any language, the only way to know love is to experience it for yourself. You will know.
And I think you will know it when you experience connection.
Self Love & Connection
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.”
Brené Brown
When we begin to explore what self love is, things can get really small. First, we practice radical self-acceptance and showing ourselves lovingkindness. What areas of your life are asking to be explored? What areas feel alive and full of excitement? What areas feel uncertain or like they’d like to be hidden? What areas do we self-condemn or feel condemnation from others? Practicing reflection and contemplation is often when we experience love and safety in some of the most profound ways – in some areas and sometimes, and for some of us, for the first time ever in our lives!
Many areas in our lives begin to show themselves as asking for attention, ready to grow in a way. Remember Jesus’ words about loving “with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This wholistic approach means every part of ourselves will be challenged or invited to grow when we commit to being more loving.
This can be an intensely confusing and, well, just intense process. Be gentle with yourself, and as kind as you would be with your very best friend or a young child in need of your care. Responding to each invitation as it arises, move forward at your own pace.
Growing up, people around me may have called this the invitation of the Holy Spirit, or even the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is the part of God/dess that can help us know ourselves better and respond to ourselves in ways that bring us closer to love and acceptance.
For others, pursuing inner knowledge and self acceptance is called The Work. One of the outcomes of doing inner work is beginning to fully see, know and, yes, love ourselves. This can involve receiving psychological care, caring for yourself physically, incorporating a spiritual practice, and more. There are as many ways of doing The Work as there are human beings in the world!
Knowing when we are loved and fully accepted means we no longer judge our selves for where we are at in our journey, though we accept responsibility for our behaviour. Cognitively, it can mean thinking slowly and clearly after having racing or muddled thoughts, and holding ourselves with a more loving and charitable view in our mind’s eye. In our bodies, this can feel like being able to take a deep breath after breathing tightly, dropping our shoulders away from our ears after holding them up in tension, and feeling at peace with having and being only in one moment at a time.
When we do this for ourselves and validate others’ ability to do it for themselves, we see there is essentially no division between us as people. We can no longer judge or excommunicate in the name of an ideology. We can no longer kill. We seek only to connect and uphold connection.
We are all in this together.
We are all loved.
The Feast
The work of love is always going to be more than contemplation. Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, founded the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) because “he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation—the two are inseparable.” As their website says, the most important word in the Center’s name is neither Action nor Contemplation, but the word and (a connecting word!).
Rohr also defines contemplation is a way of listening with the heart while not relying entirely on the head. Contemplation is a prayerful letting go of our sense of control and choosing to cooperate with God and God’s work in the world. Prayer without action, as Father Richard says, can promote our tendency to self-preoccupation, and without contemplation, even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good.
Many people who are deconstructing their faith, or doing The Work, have found their way to both contemplation and action through other routes and using other language, often find themselves participating in social justice.
Combining both justice and collective healing, social justice work is a term many of us are now familiar with. It can take the form of many initiatives that promote fairness and equity across our society, improving access to resources and opportunities for people who typically have less due to race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, or language. It envisions the full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs.
Any social justice-minded activity, including basic allyship, typically begins with something called “holding space”. Author and founder of the Centre for Holding Space Heather Plett says, “Holding Space is what we do when we walk alongside a person or group on a journey through liminal space. We do this without making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. We open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control.”
And, “When we hold space well, we serve the liberation and sovereignty of ALL people.”
It is easy to see how this mutuality begins with self love. Plett says the first person we hold space for is ourselves.
Social justice, love and liberation, self acceptance, lovingkindness, goodwill for all humankind, mutuality and altruism… Unburdened by book name and verse reference number, these are fruits of the Spirit. Language, in as much as it can contextually bind to culture, place and time, can also transcend. If we allow it. If we develop the ability to see it and cultivate a deep inner knowing of its truth.
Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. This is the feast all of us are invited to as humans. If you believe in some iteration of these ingredients, I’d don’t mind whichever recipe book you found them in. And I see these values, no matter the language used to talk about them – and also because of the adapting language used to talk about them, are what will sustain us in the future.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and yours. I wish for you and for us all, a feast of all the good things.
The Prairie Thistle 