runs. Divine love is always the goal. But it can only build on all the stepping-
stones of human relationships—and then it includes them all!
The receiving of love lets us know that there was indeed a Giver.
And freedom to even ask for love is the beginning of the receiving.
Thus Jesus can rightly say, “If you ask, you will receive” (Matthew 7:7–8).
To ask is to open the conduit from your side.
Your asking is only seconding the motion.
The first motion is always from God.*1 I wrote about this at length in Adam’s Return (New York: Crossroad, 2004).
*2 Richard Rohr, Falling Upward (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).
*3 Eloi Leclerc, The Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi, trans. Marie-Louise Johnson (Pasadena,
CA: Hope Publishing House, 1992), 72.
*4 See also Romans 8:28–29, where Paul says that it is “co-operators” who “become true images
of his Son, so that Jesus might be the eldest of many brothers [and sisters].”
*5 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Divine Milieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 139.
*6 This certainly is not helped by the fact that threats and punishment were the rather
universal method of parenting until very recently.