Saturday, July 26, 2008

"This alone is Reality"

"Boy and Girl"

To see the words "Reality" and "Infinite Charity" in the following passage capitalized is wonderfully illuminating. They are names for God. Sometimes we need a more expansive language than the usual anthropomorphic words we commonly use:

When we look out towards this love that moves the stars and stirs in the child's heart and claims our total allegiance, and remember that this alone is Reality and we are only real so far as we conform to its demands, we see our human situation from a fresh angle; and we perceive that it is both more humble and dependent, and more splendid, than we had dreamed. We are surrounded and penetrated by great spiritual forces of which we hardly know anything. Yet the outward events of our life cannot be understood, except in their relation to that unseen and intensely living world, the Infinite Charity which penetrates and supports us, the God whom we resist and yet for whom we thirst; who is ever at work, transforming the self-centred desire of the natural creature into the wide spreading, outpouring love of the citizen of Heaven.

-- Evelyn Underhill

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