Unless we see 'Love' as God.... who cannot storm our hearts by force, but knocks politely, waiting patiently for us to let Him/Her in.
As Paul famously wrote in his first Letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way/ it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
I believe that the best kind of human love shares these attributes. If we truly love someone, we accept them just the way they are. If the person we love behaves badly, we hold on to our love with everything we've got, and hope that our love will eventually be accepted.
And unless we can open our hearts to God, we will never truly experience His/Her Love.
I am not a mystic, but once, I had a vision of the truth, which I can only believe came from God. A few years ago, I bought myself a Celtic-style silver cross. For many years, I had repudiated the symbol of the Christian cross, associating it with death and failure. But my attendance on the Encounter course at the London Centre for Spiritual Direction was opening my heart in ways I had not foreseen.
And one morning, I was applying some moisturiser to my face, using a magnifying mirror for the purpose, when the mirror slipped, canting to a different angle. And I noticed the cross around my neck and realised that instead of a circle at the centre, it had a heart.
This hit me with the force of a revelation. I saw that God was Love at the centre of everything. A belief which has changed my life. For the first time, I was able to accept God's love for me, and to realise that my job in the world was to love others in that same wholehearted way.
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