How will I know?

Years ago Whitney Houston sang a catchy tune that posed the question, "How will I know if he really loves me?"  Today, in both the Lectionary's regular and optional scriptures and as I listened to two  sermons in another marathon church session, I found the modified jingle, "How will I know if I really love God?" playing in my head -- a unifying theme.

It's not that the scriptures or the preachers asked that question exactly.  In fact, both preachers seemed to be more concerned with showing that you do, rather than wondering if you do.  For the brief Episcopalian homliy, it is just a matter of expanding my view of who is my neighbor -- help out wherever you encounter a need.  In my sister's church, the big issue today seemed to be desire to know God.  Not being bound by the Lectionary, I think it was largely coincidental that this preacher based his sermon on Matthew 22:36-37, which parallels the Luke 10 story in today's reading; "Which is the great commandment?" [I was surprised that he did not extend the reading or his sermon to verse 39; "And the second is like unto it..."  But, more about that later.]  He spoke for nearly an hour about each of us being the "bride of Christ" and being being "adulterers" when we put anything else before our love of God;  about how easily we slip from fervent ardor for God to preoccupation with "the good life," our comfort, things, accomplishments...  They were good words, all, but still left me wondering "Who/what is Christ, that I could be his bride?  What does it mean to await his coming when I don't believe in a literal, end-times rapture? When and how do I make the choice that puts me inside or outside God's Kingdom, and where/what is God's kingdom anyway?"  

The collect and the reading from Colossians both express the hope that we might know and understand the things we ought to do and have the grace and power to do them.  Amos says Israel is going to be measured against a plumb line and the consequences for not "measuring up" will be dire -- but Deuteronomy says that "the commandment we are commanded today is NOT too hard for you, nor is it to far away. ... no, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart..." Jesus said to the lawyer (paraphrasing from Luke 10), "You know the answer, you can recite it back to me easily.  Just do this and you will live."  But still, "love God and love your neighbor" -- I think I get the love your neighbor part, but I'm not even really sure about that.  And I still wonder what loving God truly means, when I don't even know for sure what God really is, or if I believe in "him."  Could it really be something so simple, so natural that is is already written in my mind and heart?

Thanks to a serious Southern Baptist upbringing, a great deal of the Bible [KJV, of course -- the version God penned by His Own Hand] quotes itself to me whenever prompted by a snippet from one of the familiar passages.  So, I couldn't help but hear Matthew 22:39-40 in my head when the preacher read Matthew 22:37-38.  In the KJV, it says that "the second is like unto it [the first]."  As I sat and questioned my questions, I thought about what Jesus meant by "like unto."  Could he be saying that "the second is another way to look at the first--a different way to say the same thing"?  What if that were true?

I don't think I can properly attribute this philosophy,**  but one theory of the spirit of the universe has that originally "God -- all the light/spirit of the universe" was one, together, unified.  Then, in an eternal game of loving and losing and finding again, God in creation shattered into uncountable shards of light that each became bound deep within the living things in the universe; past, present and future.  The purpose of each life, then, is to liberate that piece of light/ultimate-God to rejoin with all the others into the eternal entity that never truly is created or destroyed; unchanging and yet transformed again and again through love.  In as much as a life succeeds in liberating the light within, it takes part in "heaven," "God's kingdom," "true spirit."  But if the life keeps the light hidden and bound, and especially if it binds others too, until it and they are ultimately reincorporated into the cosmos through death and rebirth, then that particular life is "cast off into outer darkness," since nothing of it remains as a path or contribution to reuniting with the only true eternal.  

I realize that's a bit of a departure from what one could call an orthodox Christian faith, but at the same time, we do profess that it is "Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27)."  And Jesus said, "whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me (Matthew 25:40)."  And what if he really did mean that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is another way to view the commandment about loving God -- God in us, God in them?  We are the "bride of Christ" but we are also "Christ in you."  The Christian theology about marriage is that two become one.  Is loving God the same as seeking to be one with the bit of God that is in each and every separate life?  To truly see us as not separate but as part of each other and pieces of a whole?  Are we -- our best, true selves -- but part of the eternal whole, waiting to be liberated and seeking out the corresponding part of God in every Other? 

Is this, then, loving God: to look for and love that God that is in each and every life, in every one of us -- ourselves included? 


** I came upon this basic idea on the Integral Life website, and would like to attribute it to Ken Wilber, but possibly also to Father Thomas Keating or to Marc Gafni.  I think I've heard each one of them mention something along these lines, and it's quite possible that they are all quoting yet another source.