The following quotes are from 3 of Anne Lamott’s series of memoirs. In the places where she uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that the meaning is in keeping with the original biblical meaning of ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape.’
“Our hearts are like diamonds because they have the capacity to express divine light, which is agape; we not only are portals for this agape, but are made of it.
“You are Spirit, you are agape, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You’re here to share agape, and to receive agape, freely.
“We don’t transform ourselves, but when we finally hear, the Spirit has access to our hearts, and that is what changes us.
“I felt a shift inside, the conviction that agape was having its way with me, softening me, changing my cold stone heart. The feeling grew stronger and stronger, until, unfortunately, church was over. Driving home, I tried to hold on to what I’d heard that day: that having agape for your enemies was nonnegotiable. It meant trying to respect them, it meant identifying with their humanity and weaknesses. It didn’t mean unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior. They were still accountable for the atrocities they’d perpetrated, as you were accountable for yours. But you worked at doing better, at having agape for them, for the profoundest spiritual reason: you were trying not to make things worse.
“Spiritual power is the animation energy of agape. The light of agape is the energy and motion that have called us to prayer, allowing us to perceive at least bits of deeper reality.
“This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we’re most sure that agape can’t conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.
“If you want to be forgiven, if you want to experience that kind of agape, you have to forgive everyone in your life — everyone, even the very worst boy friend you ever had — even, for God’s sake, yourself. In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
“…ask God to help them have a sense of peace, and for them to feel the agape of God.
“To survive unsurvivable losses and finally come to happiness again is possible when agape comes to them through their closest people and through a community of support, helping them and surrounding them with agape.
“Agape falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted.”
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