A little lower than the angels

Today, and last week, and a few other times in recent memory, I’ve been dazzled by bright glimpses of God’s love for me. I see it in this: God really wants me to do what it is I most deeply desire. He’s given me this thing that satisfies me deeply to do, and He guides me in its unfolding. I’m not on my own, and it’s not impossible. It’s not daunting, not something I might wish for but never be able to obtain. He gives me both the drive and the satisfaction, and He will give me the fruition as well.

It’s hard to describe how exciting this is, how it feels like flying, how it fills in every ancient anxiety with the ease of water shifting wet sand to fill a hole dug at the beach. All those years of feeling I just didn’t have motivation to do the things I thought I should be doing, and secretly fearing I didn’t have the foundational knowledge to make good on things I believed I had talent in, simply answered by this: a thing I’ve always loved to do, now with all the caveats erased, so I can experience the pure joy of striving to perfect it.

A little lower than the angels - I often wondered at this. Why is this said, what does it mean?
(“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” Ps 8:2-5)

In the context of these new glimpses I think I have an idea about it. Angels, I suppose, in their totally un-selfed identity, don’t have a need for any particular personal fulfillment. Their office is to bless, and any blessing will do - will give them the satisfaction they need to continue to thrive. I, though I may have deluded myself otherwise, am not like that. I have a particular identity which includes a set of custom-made loves - patterns that must be met for my fulfillment. They include the need to love particular people and to do particular things. I needed to be married and to have children. Now I need to write.

Thinking back on my life (rising at 2:30 AM to write, finding myself unable to sleep) I find other imperative needs that drove me with similar joy: the need to teach; the desire, in its time, to work at Antioch University; the impulsion, in high school and college, to draw, and to learn languages. Even these drives, though I have mourned those which, like lost children, never matured to mastery, were gifts to me. Gifts from the Father, who created me with these nodes of need wherein I could experience a deep and very individualized love. God’s love for me is not just a general one, poured indifferently like rain or sunshine. It is precise and infinitely tailored, with utmost care, for me specifically.

Which leads me to understand the nature of love, that it is like that for every person, every bird, every being. I used to wonder what was the advantage of being made lower than something else. Now I’m beginning to learn. Humility allows me to accept this great gift of love. Awe floods In as I begin to understand it.

Divine Love

“Divine Love always has met, and always will meet, every human need.”
-Mary Baker Eddy

I learned to recite this as a childhood table grace, in sing-song voice, with no thought of meaning. Later I tried to put more understanding into my thought of the sentence. I knew divine Love was a name for God. “God always has met, and always will meet, every human need.” Really? I hadn’t seen it yet. I tried to conjure faith to understand, sought miracles as proof. But it was hard to keep the sing-song out of the sentence, and God, though I knew the seven synonyms, one of which is “Love,” seemed like a name for someone I didn’t know very well.

Then I came to know more of love. How love fills me, sounds me, makes me ring like crystal, sea-changes me. All previous substances removed, replaced by the substance of love. How love is the fulfillment of all my desire, the sure source of boundless joy, my full sense of purpose, my sufficient reward. Everything. Through the experience of love, I came to know more of Love. Love as the only cause of all being. Love as Life itself. Love as the only reason anything would ever have for springing into existence and continuing to be.

So it came to make more sense. Of course divine Love meets my needs: it is what I need. If I have it, I have everything. There’s nothing I crave besides it. And if it is also the causative law of being, it will be sure, because it loves me, to see that I feel the meeting of every perceived need - that I have ample sustenance and shelter and purpose and fulfillment. That I get to give what my heart knows I need to give in this world, and that it will be received and valued. The only way for me to understand the sentence is to feel the present touch of divine Love. Then it’s obvious. Divine Love does meet every human need.