The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on February 7, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Anyone who loves someone knows that love is complex. Greek philosophy attempts to clarify the complexity of love by organizing it into three categories: filial, erotic, and agape. The Christian canon, in the gospel of John, seemingly keeps it simple: God is Love. Yet to equate God with Love really just makes both God and Love, as all-consuming realities, more difficult to comprehend.
Perhaps that is the point. Human love wouldn’t really be love if it were not all consuming. God wouldn’t really be God if what we thought we were naming was a reality we could actually grasp, rather than ultimate mystery. So we are left with big questions. Who is God? How to love?
Then, the practical questions for prayer emerge as well. How do we pray in God in Love? Is God like my mother and father, and should I offer a love to God marked by faithfulness and obedience? Is God like my partner, and should I offer a love marked by commitment and total giving of myself? Is God like the earth and should I offer a love marked by concern and care? Perhaps all of these loves can be true when seen through the lens of multiplicity, on the human side of the relational equation.
From the side of Holy One, if love is really God and God is simply Love, then perhaps the Love of God is simply the singular and strongest force in the universe. And the practical part of prayer in Love is to learn how to follow and align my actions and my being within the all-encompassing force of the Love of God.
