“Love flies, runs, leaps for joy; it is free and unrestrained. Love gives all for all, resting in One who is highest above all things, from whom every good flows and proceeds. Love does not regard the gifts but turns to the Giver of all good gifts. Love knows no limits but ardently transcends all bounds. Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil, and attempts things beyond its strength; love sees nothing as impossible, for it can achieve all things. Love, therefore, does great things; it is strange and effective, while he who lacks love faints and fails.”

—THOMAS À KEMPIS, The Imitation of Christ.

“In the way of GOD, thoughts count for little; love is everything.”

―Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

The scribe who asked Jesus, “What is the most important commandment of all?” had a legitimate concern. No one could claim to keep all the laws attributed to Moses.

As Marcus Borg points out,

“Embedded within the narrative of the Pentateuch are the 613 laws [presumably] revealed by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. (Passerby, Very important. Any law that endorses violence, the domination of women, hierarchy, or patriarchy is not a revelation from YHWH.) The most famous of these are, of course, the Ten Commandments. But the laws of the Pentateuch address far more than those ten issues. Reading the Bible again for the first time, Marcus Borg”

There was real danger in not keeping them. Your life could be at stake.

The writer of the dialogue recorded in the Gospel according to Mark is further discussed by the writer of Matthew, who additionally has Jesus saying, “On these two commandments all the law and the prophets, depend.”

The Spirit says, “I summed up everything that I have been trying to get you to hear all this time in these two commands.”

Love and then, Love. Well, that simplifies things, doesn’t it?

Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14:15).” Of course, the only teachings Jesus identified as commandments are about Love. The single responsibility we each have to all of our fellow humans is to Love. And, nothing I can find in the teaching of the perennial wisdom tradition, including the teaching of Jesus, offers humanity any exemption from the obligation to Love.

• • •

So, what I hear in the Spirit’s words about becoming “the Lover of God” is this. Ultimately, there can be only one crucial thing: learning to receive and return Her Love and to Love all that Her hands have created, just like She does. “Love one another as I have Loved you.”

There is only one crucial thing. As the prophet said, “All You Need Is Love. Love is all you need.” —John Lennon.