分享園地
各位團友, 這個分享園地是希望可以讓團友可以在網上互相分享在靈上的得著.
希望可以藉著彼此的分享鼓勵大家有穩定的靈修和祈禱生活.
若你們在靈修時或睇聖經時有些特別的感動想和大家分享, 你們也可以Email給我,
我會將你們的分享放在這裡, 讓大家也能分享到你的感受!
| 28/12 (Queenie靈修所看到的一篇文章) From: The Genesee Diary |
| (備註：當時作者正在一修道園內，約會住7個月)
I would like to think a little more about love. This monastery definitely exudes(散發出) a real atmosphere of love. You can indeed say, the monks love each other. I even dare to say they show a real love to me. I think that this is a very important experience because they not only make me feel love but also help me to understand love better. My first inclination(傾向, 偏好) has been, and in many ways still is, to connect love with something special in me that makes me lovable. When people are kind and friendly toward me, I feel happy because I think that they are attracted to me and like me in a special way. This more or less unconscious attitude got me into trouble here since the monk who is nice and good to me proves to be just as nice and good to everyone else. So it becomes hard to believe that he loves me because of something special that i have and others do not have. I am obviously not more or less attractive than others. This experience was in the beginning a painful one. I tended to react by thinking, "Well, if he is just as friendly to everyone else as he is to me, his friendliness cannot be real. It is just one of those poses, one of those 'frozen smiles.' He is friendly because he is supposed to be friendly to everyone else as he is to me, his friendly because he is supposed to be friendly. He is just following the rule. His love is only the result of obedience. It is not natural, not spontaneous, not real. Underneath his friendly surface he probably couldn't care less about me as an individual." But these ruminations were exactly that: ruminations. I knew that i was fooling myself, that there was something very important I was missing. I knew it simply because the story I told myself was not true. The monks who show me love, show love to me not as an abstraction but as a real individual with his own strengths and weaknesses, habits and customs, pleasant and unpleasant sides. The love they show me is very alert, awake, and based on the real me. When I ask something, they listen with attention and try to help me, and when I show a need for support, information, or interest, they offer me as well as they can what I need. So although their love for me is not exclusive, particular, or unique, it is certainly not general, abstract, impersonal, or just and act of obedience to the rule. It is important for me to realize how limited, imperfect, and weak my understanding of love has been. Not my theoretical understanding but my understanding as it reveals(顯示) itself in my emotional responses to concrete situations. My idea of love proves to be exclusive: " You only love me truly if you love others less" ; possessive(佔有慾的): "If you really love me, I want you to pay speical attention to me" ; and manipulative: "When you love me, you will do extra things for me." Well, this idea of love easily leads to vanity(虛榮): "You must see something very special in me" ; to jealousy: "Why are you now suddenly so interested in someone else and not in me?" and to anger: "I am going to let you know that you have let me down and rejected me." But love is "always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful" (I Cor. 13:4-5). It is this understanding of love that I must slowly learn. But how? It seems that the monks know the answer,"You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." This is the greatest and the first commandment. It seems that the life the monks are living is a witness to the importance of keeping the first commandment first so that the second, "which resembles it" can be realized as well: "You must love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt. 22:37-39). I am beginning to experience that an unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate(清晰的), alert, and attentive love for the neighbor possible. What I often call "love for neighbor" too often proves to be a tentative(暫時性的), partial(偏愛的), or monentary(金錢上的) attraction, which usually is very unstable and does not last long. But when the love of God is indeed my first concern, a deep love for my neighbor can grow. Two more considerations may clarify this. First of all, I discover myself in a new way in the love of God. St. Bernard of Clairvaux describes as the highest degree of love the love of ourselves for God's sake. Thomas Merton commenting on this says: "This is the high point of Bernard's Christian humanism. It shows that the fulfillment of our destiny is not merely to be lost in God, as the traditional figures of speech would have it, like a 'drop of water in a barrel of wine or like iron in the fire' but found in God in all our individual and personal reality, tasting our eternal happiness not only in the fact that we have attained to the possession of his infinite goodness, but above all in the fact that we see his will done in us." Secondly, it is not only ourselves we discover in our individuality but our fellow human beings as well, because it is God's glory itself that manifests itself in his people in an abundant variety of forms and styles. The uniqueness of our neighbors is not related to those idiosyncratic(特質的) qualities that only they and nobody else have, but it is related to the fact that God's eternal beauty and love become visible in these unique, irreplaceable, finite human beings. It is exactly in the preciousness(貴重) of the individual person that the eternal love of God is refracted and becomes the basis of a community of love. When we have found our own uniqueness in the love of God and have been able to affirm that indeed we are lovable since it is God's love that dwells in us, then we can reach our to others in whom we discover a new and unique manifestation of the same love and enter into an intimate communion with them. (錄自: Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary, 1981 ) |
| 這篇日記是作者對於愛的反省, 也給我有很大的提醒.
其實我也像作者所提到的, 對「愛」的理解實在很淺薄. 我也會覺得別人喜歡我(不只是情愛上的喜歡), 是因為我有特別、與人不同的地方, 而且也會有懷疑或妒忌別人的愛的時候, 因此我覺得作者讓我可以更真正的面對自己, 看到自己的不足. 而且他更提到神的愛. 若我們能明白神我愛, 我們才能/懂得去愛別人. 神愛我們不是因為我們可愛/不可愛, 而是神給我們的一切讓我們明白神怎樣愛我們. 神照著祂的樣式造人, 這已經表明了神對人的愛有多大. 知道神真的重視和愛我們. |
