Love


It is all simply to do with Love

Not a desirous ache for something you want or can't feel you can live without, but a Love that is of service and care and giving as opposed to taking.

You do not need to be clever to know God.

Love is a gift from God. Just ask for it. Love grows by doing it. Take the leap of faith and choose to Love.

You can't do anything of God's work without God's Love. With God's Love you can't do anything but God's work.

Ask for it throughout the day every day. And choose to do it throughout the day every day. It brings tears of joy, happiness, determination to do good, energy, enthusiasm and gratefulness. It brings Life.

It is the source of healing. It heals mental health, spiritual health and with these we know it can heal the body. But if your bodily death looms, focus on God's Love. It's a choice; choose to be with Love.

Human love might start with desire and attachment, if not always. This is natural and so to be expected. But from the start it is human love and if one wants to Live in God, then from the start this has to be realized and accepted, and resulting actions must be brought into alignment with God's Love, and not left to being led by this human desire and attachment. Yet if someone tries to reject or suppress desire too harshly from the outset, it can sometimes backfire, it doesn’t disappear, it just hides or distorts. But if it’s acknowledged honestly and then shaped, almost “trained” toward generosity and steadiness, it can become part of the growth rather than an obstacle. Human love may begin with desire, but it shouldn’t remain governed by it.

Do not mistake Love for desire. They are not the same and yet we use the same word for both. When "I love you" means I want you so much I can't live without you - this is selfish desire. God's Love gives, it does not take. God's love, true Love, is not needy or possessive but selfish desire is. God's Love doesn't desire anything but action and Life in God's Love. It does not selfishly desire a lover, a person, a thing or even this fleeting bodily life. Neither does it desire bodily death. It desires God's Love and Truth and right action in accordance to these. Love readily gives; it possesses and wants for nothing. God's Love is inexhaustible and eternal, and in it so will we be. But out of it we won't. It is free, inexhaustible and everything we need for happiness and joy. It is the pearl. Take it.



------------------------------
Interview with Fr Aiden

What you’ve written reads like a distilled spiritual philosophy, almost a lived theology rather than an abstract one. There’s a strong throughline in it: the distinction between grasping and giving, between desire that seeks to fill itself and love that overflows outward.

A few things stand out as especially grounded and worth holding onto. You’re right to separate love from possessive desire. Many traditions make that distinction because, in practice, they feel very different. One contracts (“I need, I want, I can’t lose this”), while the other expands (“I can give, I can serve, I can remain steady whether I gain or lose”). That difference alone explains a lot of human confusion.

At the same time, your nuance about not suppressing desire too harshly is important. Trying to cut it out completely often just drives it underground where it becomes less honest and harder to work with. What you describe instead, training it, shaping it toward generosity, is psychologically and spiritually realistic. It turns something raw into something refined rather than pretending it never existed.

There’s also something powerful in your emphasis on practice. Not just believing in love, but choosing it repeatedly throughout the day. That shifts it from an idea into a discipline. And disciplines, unlike emotions, can actually carry a person through difficult or dry periods.

Yet even selfless love can sometimes become abstract if it isn’t grounded in real human relationships. The danger isn’t desire, it’s disconnection. If “God’s Love” becomes something that floats above ordinary life, it can unintentionally distance us from the messy, imperfect ways love actually shows up between people. In other words, the transformation you’re pointing to may not be, leaving human love behind, but letting human love be reshaped, slowly, into something less possessive and more generous. That keeps it embodied, not just ideal.

Your closing line, “It is the pearl. Take it.”, captures the essence of commitment. Not just understanding, but choosing.

What does choosing this kind of love look like in the smallest, most ordinary moments of a day? That’s usually where the philosophy either becomes real, or fades back into words.


----------------
Br Nicholas:

Every day, throughout the day, we have choice as to what to do. Shall I do what I know to be the right thing? Or shall I not and make up an excuse why I did not. Shall I care for the person in front of me, or shall I selfishly focus on my own gain and comfort? These are the small ordinary moments to exercise Love.


------------
Fr Aiden:

That’s a very grounded way of putting it, and it cuts through a lot of abstraction.

What you’re describing is where love stops being a feeling and becomes a series of decisions under real conditions: inconvenience, fatigue, ego, fear, distraction. In that sense, love isn’t proven in big, dramatic moments but in these quiet forks in the road that happen dozens of times a day. There’s also an honesty in how you frame it, we usually know what the right thing is. The tension isn’t confusion, it’s resistance. The mind supplies justifications, delays, or reframes to protect comfort. That’s a very human pattern.

One thing worth adding, though: if this becomes too rigid, “always choose the right thing or you’ve failed”, it can quietly turn into pressure or self-judgment. And ironically, that can make a person less patient, less kind, and less able to love others well. A more sustainable way to hold what you’re saying might be to say yes, each moment is a choice, yes, we often know the more loving action but we will miss it sometimes. And when that happens, there’s another choice, to respond with honesty instead of excuse, and with humility instead of harshness.

That, too, is part of love. Because if love is truly what you describe, giving, steady, not possessive, then it should also apply inwardly. Not as indulgence, but as clarity without cruelty. So the practice becomes something like, notice the moment, choose the more loving action when you can and  when you don’t, don’t hide, learn, reset, continue. Over time, that repetition shapes instinct. What feels like effort starts to feel more natural, not because desire disappears, but because it’s been trained, just like you described earlier. And then those “small ordinary moments” stop feeling small, they become the whole path.


----------------
Br Nicholas:

Yes, very much so. Love also forgives and is merciful, and asks us to forgive, love and be merciful to ourselves just as it asks us to be forgiving and merciful to others.


------------
Fr Aiden:

Yes, and that completes the picture in an important way. If love only called us outward, serve, give, do the right thing, without also including mercy, it would eventually become тяжкое (heavy, burdensome). What you’re describing keeps it alive and human: love not only acts, it restores.

Forgiveness is what prevents the whole path from collapsing under imperfection. Because in reality we will fail to choose rightly sometimes,  we will act from selfishness, fear, or habit and we will fall short of the love we intend. Without mercy, those moments turn into shame or denial. With mercy, they become points of return.

And that’s the key, mercy doesn’t excuse or pretend nothing happened. It sees clearly and still allows you to begin again. There’s also something subtle but very true in what you said which is learning to forgive others and learning to forgive yourself are not separate skills. If someone is harsh and unforgiving inwardly, it almost always leaks outward. And the reverse is true too, genuine mercy tends to flow in both directions. So the procedure becomes,  choose love where you can, notice honestly where you didn’t,  receive and extend mercy and return to love again. That cycle doesn’t weaken the practice, it’s what makes it sustainable over a lifetime. In a way, mercy is what keeps love from becoming an ideal you chase… and turns it into something you can actually live in, even while imperfec