I've been picking up "No Man is an Island" by Thomas Merton a lot, and I have to say that I love it :) Its definitely one of those reads that's been hard to get through...not because it's difficult to understand but because moments after I begin, I come across an inspiring word, thought, or idea and get stuck on it. It's so hard to move on.
But one recurring theme for me has been simply the nature of love. Merton writes that "A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared...Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life."
I'm sure this was really hard for me to grasp as a little girl. I would never have understood that happiness and love increased in the proportion that I shared what I had with others. My most precious things (sadly just stuff like toys, candy, etc.) were exactly that - "mine." I was so misguided in thinking that to share would be to diminish my joy. And as we grow, we continue to live off of a false self-satisfaction. We don't see the need to share. I think that's why it's so easy as a growing Christian to fall into the same way of thinking. I did this myself for so long. After knowing and accepting Christ, I was content to live my faith in isolation from others. Sadly, we can desire closeness to God but not see the need to share our faith in communion with other believers.
Or we can even experience who Christ is, but not have a zealous longing that others know Him that, in turn, inspires us to share with those who do not believe. We focus on "our" walk with God, and even being in a community only serves the purpose of keeping
us rooted. It can easily always become about what we receive. But we were made for true oneness - oneness with Christ and oneness with each other. So that just as His Word describes, "We, though many, are one body in Christ." Our Lord reminds us that we are to share what we have received and to "make disciples of all nations" so that all may come to witness and share in the life of God. We are called to selfless faith, and to give without cost.
Merton goes on to describe this exchange of love in relation to our friendships with others:
"Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. It has only one good. that of the beloved, which is, at the same time, my own. Love shares the good with another not by dividing it with him, but by identifying itself with him so that his good becomes my own. The same good is enjoyed in its wholeness by two in one spirit, not halved and shared by two souls. Where love is really disinterested, the lover does not even stop to inquire whether he can safely appropriate for himself some part of the good which he wills for his friend. Love seeks its whole good in the good of the beloved, and to divide that good would be to diminish love. Such a division would not only weaken the action of love, but in doing so would also diminish its joy. For love does not seek a joy that follows from its effect: its joy is in the effect itself, which is the good of the beloved. Consequently, if my love be pure I do not even have to seek for myself the satisfaction of loving. Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward."
May God help us to love each other in this way and know that "love given freely becomes what it ought to be" ("Ought to be", Audrey Assad).
