The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
Interpretation
Realizing the difference between understanding love and actually experiencing it can take a long time.
This quote by Henri Nouwen reflects the idea that it's one thing to learn about love in an intellectual or theoretical sense, but itβs an entirely different challenge to open oneself up to love and vulnerability. The journey from merely teaching or understanding love to truly embodying it and welcoming it into oneβs life can be a complex and often lengthy process, filled with personal growth and self-discovery.
In practice
During a relationship seminar, one might use this quote to illustrate the emotional hurdles people face.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.
As Marilee and I were dressing, I whispered to her that I loved her with all my heart. What else was there to say? 'You don't. You can't,' she said.
I have loved and been in love. There's a big difference.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
My sight _x000D_ My heart _x000D_ My Life _x000D_ All three words I have woven into one ... Love.
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning.
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