“Love, which created me, is what I am.” A Course in Miracles, Lesson 229
“Love is who we are. Somewhere we already know this. But the beauty of difficult times is that in them we actively get to see that love shows up in a thousand ways to hold us, that the beloved – no matter what he or she or it may look like – is always there to find us, to travel with us through our pain…. Love has a thousand names and a million faces. It will give you everything and ask for only one thing in return – that it may come and wear your face, that you will let it use your name.” Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart.
There is this One Life, the Life of the Beloved: God’s Life. It is everywhere present, showing up as the thousand names, the million faces. It is in the smile of the stranger letting me pull into traffic. It is in the homeless man begging on the street that I give a bottle of water to. It is the outpouring of love that emerges each time a tragedy hits, whether it’s one person hit by a drunk driver, or the thousands devastated by a hurricane or tsunami or a terrorist’s plane. Love has a thousand names and millions or faces. This One Life is God. It is Compassion. It is Kindness. It is Support. It is Powerful; Unstoppable; Indefatigable. Spirit is Love and It is the driving force of the Universe. It is the underpinning of life, and it is who we are.
For I am a divine expression, and so are you. I am one of the million faces of love, one of the thousand names. I am love, as God created me to be. So are you. Even lost within all the moments of the day when I allow my ideas of how things should be to cloud my vision and tear me from this truth, it remains. There, waiting to be rediscovered. Love is everywhere. It is kindness; it is smiles; it is laughter; it is here. It is me. It is you. It is them. It is us. It is. It is. It can never not be.
And so knowing this, recognizing this truth, I embrace it. I fold it into my heart and wrap it in tenderness. I nestle it into my secret stash of tricks that I pull out like a map when I lose my way. I tattoo the message on my brain and it plays like a song I can’t get out of my head. “Love, which created me, is what I am.” So I choose love, instead of frustration. I choose love instead of anger. I choose love instead of hurt. I choose love. I choose love. It is ever there waiting to be plucked like a fragrant rose. It is who I am. It is what you are. If I do not see it, I must have forgotten who I am. For that which is not love, is a call for love, and I have only to remember that to introduce it back into the equation. With it comes peace. With it comes joy. Settle into it. The sweetness of it contains heaven.
There in heaven, I rest in gratitude. There in heaven, thank you is my mantra. I remember who I am. Love. I remember who you are. Love. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Then I let go. I release my prayer into the heart of God, where it was heard before I spoke it, where it was done before I even knew it needed to be. I am as God created me. Love, love, love. How beautiful the truth of it, how beautiful the song: Love, which created me, is what I am. And so it is! Amen!!!!
Nancy Bowers is a Practitioner at the Rio Grande Center For Spiritual Living, Albuquerque, NM 87107