A Pilgrimage of Love
“We love God because God first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
“The object of our desire wants us even more than we want the Desired One. It is God within us that allows us to fall in love with God.”[1] Kenneth McIntosh
Pilgrimages were important, even essential for the ancient Celts. Columba took a permanent one when he went to Iona. Patrick took one when he returned to Ireland. And Brigid took many, planting seeds of love in her path. Have you ever thought of life that way? As a pilgrimage. And even more specifically, as a pilgrimage of love?
Think about falling in love. What was it like? What is it like? Allow yourself a few moments to relish the revelry of that experience . . .
Now apply that to God. How does that feel? Strange? Unusual? Inappropriate?
For the Celts it was perfectly normal. In fact, it was more than normal. It was desirable!
I remember the first time I fell in love with a person. I think I was about 8 years old. It was a girl named LeAnn who was visiting her grandparents one summer and came to the Vacation Bible School at our church. It was a wonderful week! I remember the first time I fell in love with God. It was about the same time. I was out in the woods behind our house and was overcome with the beauty that surrounded me. “Certainly someone must love me”, I thought, “to have put me in this place.” It was an experience that filled me in body, mind, and spirit.
As I grew, that love of God was nurtured for a time in church and Sunday School. But at some point it became more intellectual than experiential. God became a dogma, a doctrine. Someone, or something to be defined and delineated. The process began in earnest in college and was completed in Seminary, which I now see as indoctrination rather than education. God became smaller and smaller and smaller as my knowledge, ego and pride grew.
“Modern Christianity exerts a lot of intellectual energy, analyzing and examining the doctrinal foundations of the faith. We sometimes neglect, however, to involve our body and emotions. How can we kindle the passion the ancient Celts felt for God? Sure, we can make an intellectual commitment to God, and we can act like we love God. Both are essential to any long-term relationship. But how do we rouse our emotions in the way the Celts did?”[2]
It wasn’t until I left the church that I had known and served, and in the process the god[3] that I had been taught to believe in that I fell in love with God. It happened at Iona in Scotland. You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? It was there, in that magical and mystical place, that I met God again. I met the God that I had known as a child. And I fell in love. Bernard of Clairvaux puts my experience into words:
“The motive for loving god is God himself. He is both the cause of our love and the object of our love. He is the inspiration for our love, he creates our love, and he fulfills our love. Loving him comes naturally, because our love is prepared and rewarded by his for us. Some day we will love him perfectly. That is the hope that leas our love forward . . . Here is a paradox: no one can seek God unless they have already found him. You, O god, write the rules to this strange game of hide and seek, allowing us to find you so that we can look for you—while we look for you, so that you can be more truly found.”[4]
McIntosh sums this up by saying, “Loving God is a lifelong pilgrimage, a labyrinth walk that in this mortal life never fully reaches the center point.”
A Pilgrimage of Love. I like that. NO, I LOVE that!
So what about you? Are you on a pilgrimage of love? Are you in love with the one who Loves you? Are your emotions, your passions, aroused for God? If so,how wonderful! And if not, what would it take for it to be so?
[1] “Water From an Ancient Well” by Kenneth McIntosh. p. 39
[2] IBID, p. 36
[3] This lack of a capital “G” is intentional, by the way.
[4] IBID, p. 39