In my previous posting I commented on St. Paul’s profound point that we should use agape to do everything that we do in life (1 Cor. 16:14). (And of course, that verse makes a lot more sense when we leave ‘agape’ untranslated, to carry the meaning of powerful faith, instead of weakening his point by using the common English word ‘love.’)
I’ve been trying to follow the meaning of that verse by extending my ‘agape prayer’ beyond my early morning prayer practice. I try letting my experience of the spiritual power of agape extend out in various ways so that I center the activities of my daily life around experiencing agape flowing through me. But... I’m finding it hard to remember to do that in many times during mundane activities. Usually, to see the meaning, I have to wait til the end of the day then reflect back over the times when I was able to experience momentary centering. As I do that looking back, I try finding a pattern to my day that can show me how to be more effective in centering my life with agape.
In that way I’ve been using the pattern-building process, stretched out over a few years, to realize how agape power has opened up my life from the very depths of my being and helped me over the years with my growth in faith. So my commitment is to focus on agape-flow in daily prayer exercises and then find ways throughout the day to let agape flow through me. During all this time it has been increasingly important to my faith development to continue to experience agape as a flowing spiritual power that opens me to ACCESS spiritual Presence all around me, within me, and extending infinitely.
As I look back over the last few years, I try to see how I’ve been slowly transformed by living my daily life in the reality of such spiritual flow. Even though I still have times when I let myself get overly tired and frustrated, I still find I've been increasing the depth of concern, caring, and compassion in my relationships. And I’ve always included in relationships: non-human creatures, and the rest of Creation. Then I try to experience this happening as others are drawn into this flow because of my participation in it and openness to it’s permeating all my living.
I’m confident that this process is available to everyone who is willing to prayerfully open up to find how God is pouring agape into our hearts. I’ve continued to read comments from more and more people, and it’s becoming apparent that a wide-spread change in perspective is happening as the experiencing of agape is spreading and the awareness is increasing. Of course, very few people recognize that it is agape.
As people describe their spiritual breakthroughs, they write about the exhilaration that brings a sense of freeing up of perspective on living. That change of perspective also allows people to see our period of history in a new light. More and more people are describing a greater awareness as people break free from the deadly, destructive perspectives that have held people back for too many centuries.
That’s why I describe what I’ve experienced as agape bringing “sacred freedom.” Not only does agape open people to new faith awareness, but also agape opens up relationships to new possibilities.
So I feel a similar hope to St. Paul’s when he expressed his hope in terms of the spiritual power of agape pouring into the heart of a faithful person (Rom. 5:5 -- if we leave ‘agape’ as its original Greek word). And so as more and more people are opened up spiritually to receive agape, each can experience agape’s power of patience and kindness. So that brings us back to 1 Cor. 13 and the wise rejoicing in the truth. In that chapter (when we leave ‘agape’ untranslated) we find the basis of true, charitable, profound compassion (as a religious principle; instead of the common English word ‘love’). And so we can let the Greek word ‘agape’ help us see the implication of 1 Cor. 13:1-3 -- if we don’t live by that spiritual power God gives us, then there is the despair of futility as all the words of the world are nothing more than clanging gongs or clashing cymbals (or symbols?), and all the knowledge of philosophy and the prophecies of religion are nothing, and all charitable acts amount to nothing. Those are harsh words indeed from a man who was forced to witness the pathetic results of trying to build a religion without the spiritual basis of accepting the gift of agape from God. But of course, he also witnessed the profound hope from people being opened up to sense God’s Presence in Life.
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