Sometimes I need to hear a voice that doesn't mess about. Spirituality is notoriously hard to define, there's still a big argument about whether it's a subject for academic study in its own right, and often enough, even when limited to Christian Spirituality, the diversity of tradition makes it hard for us even to agree what we are talking about. And maybe we are more comfortable with an unexamined pluralism of ideas, experience and styles of spirituality, than with taking a position in which we speak with clarity and conviction about what is so. At which point Bernard of Clairvaux's astringent words are a shout for silence in this spiritual marketplace dedicated to personal choices, acting like a theological cleansing of those temples we like to build and decorate to our own spiritual specifications:
why and in what way
God is to be loved.
Here's my answer:
The cause of loving God –
it's God himself.
And the measure – it's to love
God without measure.
Simple really – and such a hard call. Not as easy as I thought, this spirituality stuff! Nobody said anything about absolutes! But then Bernard pre-dates postmodernist sensitivities. Actually, Bernard doesn't go much for any sensitivities that depend on letting us have our cake and eat it. His booklet, On Loving God, is one of a number of Texts I Travel With. And one of its strengths is that it recognises some essentials are precisley that – non-negotiable goals and practices of Chjristian living.
You can find the text of On Loving God online, here. I prefer to use the Classics of Western Spirituality Edition, edited by G R Evans – I suppose I'll always prefer book to screen.
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