Becoming Love

“He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there’s more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; love is someone we become.” – Bob Goff, Everybody Always

I am sitting six rows from the stage. The tears that have started to run from the outside corners of my eyes down my cheeks are speckling the denim covering my thighs.

For most of my life, I didn’t believe in God.  Yet in the years since my heart opened to the possibility of God’s existence, it has seemingly poured out in tears in church services, yoga studios, and through writing.

While I know the presence of God and the supernatural love of Jesus, I have yet to fall easily in line with the Christian tradition.

Because in that same church where one day I am in the presence of the Great Mystery, the next I sit with a knot in my stomach when the pastor makes a joke that puts down Oprah, Muslims, and Buddhists.

For a while, I endure the jokes and the hard line that Jesus is the one only way to God.  I want to believe it because God is so real to me, but I am left feeling like I just don’t necessarily fit into this religion.

And so my pursuit of God happens mostly alone, but it is not alone because I know there are so many of us believers who rest more in the Mystery of God than the Absolute Truth.

And I unwind when I read books like Bob Goff’s that give me permission to believe what I know in my core but often rationalize myself out of, telling myself that they must know more than me because what I know is so simple.

Our only job is to become love.  That is it.  It is that simple.

I will go on continuing to gather the wisdom about how to do that and putting what I find to use.  Perhaps I may find one day that the way is Absolute.  Perhaps it will become more of a kaleidoscope.

At least, I know that from where I am now, I have a whole lifetime of becoming love to look forward to.