"From the moment I was helped to experience my interpersonal addiction as an expression of a need for total surrender to a loving God who would fulfill the deepest desires of my heart, I started to live my dependency in a radically new way. Instead of living it in shame and embarrassment, I was able to live it as an urgent invitation to claim God's unconditional love for myself, a love I can depend on without fear."

I think I may have found my new favorite book.

This whole book reminded of me of the scene when Aslan—creator, sustainer, upholder of the universe—comforts Lucy after she overhears two classmates admit they don't actually like her very much.

I cannot say enough good things about this book. I have already come back to it more than a handful of times to soak up the words again and again and again. I have always loved and wrestled with the idea of being beloved, and this book illuminated all of that. Originally written by Nouwen for a Jewish friend, I found it incredibly convicting and humbling and stunning as a lifelong Christian. I want to get the word beloved tattooed on my body to remind me forever of the core truth of my identity: I am His Beloved.

Guess what? YOU - little nondescript YOU, searching out friends or UNfriends out there in lonely cyberspace - yes you, ARE THE BELOVED!

You, glorious YOU.

(Who loves ya, baby???

GOD DOES.)

We may NOT think we Need the Life of the Beloved now, but when the sheer brute force of circumstance brings us down - cowering, right to our knees, as may soon happen to many of us - we may well reconsider.

What is the Life of the Beloved?

It is a life shared by believers everywhere, whom God has turned around - to see and accept Him: on YOUR terms.

Just as and where you are - WHEREVER that happens to be - no matter HOW bashed and embittered you are.

These folks like you have become bashed and ruined by their insights into the Truth about themselves: we ARE ALL hypocrites.

For finding your true self can be suddenly seeing THROUGH our own lies to the Real You.

But that in turn becomes a life of sheer love - love in the sense of Agape and NOT Eros - for only then Agape can become Universal.

Cause if it is erotic, you can be darned sure it won’t be shared everywhere without distinction -

That is a hard fact of life. Some folks have scruples. And the good manners to avoid boorish things.
***

So for one thing, it’s not an easy way, this Life of the Beloved, its simple Agape...

But you’re otherwise gonna be sent tumbling to your knees endlessly by the trolls and Pharisees. And by God - like in this current crisis.

And so what do you do if you fall?

You stay there, and you Pray for those Trolls. And then you turn the other cheek.

And before you know it, as both Nouwen and The Heidelberg Catechism tell us, staying there on our knees peacefully is Our Only Comfort.

Sound like a tall order?

It is - and Henri Nouwen and I both know that.

But we just do it.

And do you know what?

Succeed or Fail - it’s the Way.

When eventually we pick ourselves up and get back in the Race - like Sinatra - we’ve gotta merely say cheerfully, “that’s life!” And try to smile away the pain.

For by doing that we see our own face.

And become Broken... but NOT ASHAMED OF OUR BROKENNESS!

But you know what else - something that might REALLY surprise you?

Nouwen says elsewhere that that will only prove, overall in our life, that the single way to achieve a state of real Peace and Love - is to be Blessed, Broken and Shared, like altar bread.

Now that’s rum.

T’ain’t far wrong, folks!

Are you READY to be blessed, broken and shared throughout your life?

Is THIS the Life of the Beloved?

To be trammelled like the Lord, Broken like His bread and His body by everyone - INCLUDING -

YOURSELF?

Et tu, Brute?

If you see it, you see God’s loving, adamant Face. Two sides.

Because that’s the way it is. It’s the Open Way - as Frost implies in Directive.

There’s really nothing in it for US in the end.

Except the joy of love.

But - who else will stay with you after your last gasp?

The truth is in the tasting...

I’m a hypocrite, don’t take it from me -

I continually fail at what I do.

But I’m taking no chances.

So if I succeed or fail, He’s there.