The Fall Into Love with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. This is Josh Reeves, and I want to tell you about the midweek renewal service here at Mile Hi every Wednesday. It's all about spiritual practices. So we start with meditation at 640. There's a little talking, little music, some forgiveness practice, and then a prayer ritual as well. You're at home within an hour. A great way to spend and inspire yourself in the middle of the week.

[00:00:23] My title today for this talk is The Fall Into Love. Now we hear a lot about falling in love and falling for love and falling. He's falling. You can fall in love with a new restaurant. You can fall in love with your shoes you love. You can fall in love with people. You can fall in love with an experience you've had or a place you've been, that sort of thing. And that's all wonderful, and I'm including a lot of that in today.

[00:00:51] And just notice that my title is The Fall Into Love. The Fall Into Love. And I really started thinking about how much we talk about love like we're falling. We're falling in love. We're falling in this. We're falling in that. And at the same time, I've noticed that as human beings, the opposite is pretty much true, isn't it? Like we resist and don't want to fall at all costs. Spent a lot of time learning to walk and not fall down.

[00:01:20] And then as we grow older, I know some of us are doing exercises and things to stay centered so that if we were to fall, we could get back up or it wouldn't be so treacherous if we actually did fall, right? So everything becomes about resisting the temptation to fall or the possibility of falling.

[00:01:40] I was hearkening back to a number of years ago. I took rollerblading lessons, and the teacher took us to a park and put us on grass with mats and all the accoutrement you put on for rollerblading. And then she made us learn how to fall. First, before we ever went skating, she taught us how to fall. And being the little optimist that I am and rather arrogant, I was an ice skater. I'm sure I could get out there and skate.

[00:02:10] I was a little bit perturbed by this, I do have to say. And yet, what I learned from that experience is that when I could fall more easily, I could get up more easily. And that falling was going to be part of the experience, possibly, of rollerblading. And if I couldn't be okay with falling, I shouldn't try. And so it turns out it was a good exercise. It was a good thing for me to do.

[00:02:38] And so falling is a huge part of what happens when we contemplate love. And I think it's so interesting. And I'm inviting us to consider today learning how to fall into love more courageously, powerfully.

[00:02:56] Doing what it's going to take in our lives with the people we share our life with every day or occasionally with people we work with, with our friends, and with the world at large. What will it take for us to fall more into love instead of the opposite? A quote that I think is really significant and is a cornerstone of today's message is from one of my favorite poets, Rumi.

[00:03:26] Rumi says,

[00:03:54] He says, Love requires a fall. It requires courage. It requires some things that we have to give up in order to have it at the deepest level. And I'm not just talking the love of people and the approval of people, which is part of our love story, is that we love to feel loved and accepted by other people. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:04:23] I get it. Yet that's become the end-all, be-all for some of us. And there's a deeper love available to us if we're willing to fall into it. My husband and I have season tickets to the Broncos games, which I'm very grateful for. I am a football fan, in case you didn't know it.

[00:04:45] And I have to admit that there is something that is more joyful to me than watching the football game when we go to the games. And it is the guys who parachute into the stadium. The thunderstorm. And every time they parachute into the stadium, Alan Roach, the announcer, will say something basically like,

[00:05:07] And now the thunderstorm paratroopers or parachuters are jumping out of a perfectly good airplane into the stadium. And we have a picture of it where they will put on a camera showing themselves jumping into the stadium. Now jumping takes a lot of courage, I would think. And falling. Imagine jumping out of that plane. Some of you have probably done it. I haven't yet to do it.

[00:05:37] But jumping out of that plane and the fall, what a trust fall, right? They've got their thing that they're gliding. And I'm fascinated that they can steer themselves. And they can come down into the stadium. And sometimes they land on a little piece of something that's not much bigger than this. And I just don't know how in the world they do that. But the little girl inside of me is completely delighted by it.

[00:06:04] And I'm completely delighted when I feel myself or any of us make a choice like that. When I think about humanity and the things that humanity has faced in our history and the things that we've faced in our personal lives and in the world we've shared together, there have been times when we've been being asked to jump out of an airplane in order to fall into love.

[00:06:33] To have the courage to jump. And the question becomes, will we do it? Will we accept the challenge? Will we deepen and fall more deeply into the profound love that is calling to us?

[00:06:52] And so there are two major ways that I think we can encourage ourselves and support ourselves and step into that fall more gracefully and consciously. And I accept that they're not the easiest thing to do. Indeed, today I feel like this message might appear at first glance to be somewhat simple. Just love.

[00:07:23] But it's one of the most challenging things we're invited to do, isn't it? And for eons we've seen people invite us to it. Great teachers and thinkers and spiritual leaders have challenged us to fall into love. The great teacher Jesus himself, his entire ministry, one could argue, was all about love. Loving everyone no matter what. Loving our enemies no matter what.

[00:07:51] In more modern times we see the, I would say, ministries and work of Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolence. And the great, late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And his dedication to nonviolence. All born out of a deeper love. What if instead of hating each other? What if instead of criticizing each other?

[00:08:14] What if instead of creating this sense of polarity, we instead found ways to be, live, act, speak in every relationship and in every realm of our life from love? That's the question we've been being asked. And we continue to be asked. And I think we continue to be asked it because it's our nature. It's who we are at the deepest part of our being.

[00:08:43] And we have to, at some point, make a commitment to take that fall. Just like those guys have to make a commitment to jump out of that perfectly good airplane. We have to make a commitment to jump out of our perfectly good ideas about things into love. And it can be very risky. So the two things that I think will help us the most. The first one.

[00:09:10] We have to be willing to jump into or fall into profound growth. Profound growth. I think we have this romanticized projection with most relationships that we'll go out into the world. We'll find friends. We'll find people we love working with. If we're interested, we'll find a life partner. And once we find them, everything will be perfect.

[00:09:42] There's some laughter. You notice that? Some people know that may not be true. It is perfect, but maybe not in the way we humans have decided it would be perfect. So if we go back to Rumi's quote about removing the barriers, I think a part of that is that the profound growth that love asks us to enter into includes this.

[00:10:06] You and I have been living our life and having relationships and connections with people all of our lives. We all have a family of origin. We all had friends and grandparents and aunts and uncles and teachers and mentors and tormentors and people in our life who were part of our living.

[00:10:27] And through all of those relationships, especially when we were young, we came to conclusions about ourselves and about life and about relationships and about love. Those conclusions, decisions that we made early on live in the deepest recesses of our minds and they become, if they're not positive, barriers to love. Some of them are perfectly positive, right?

[00:10:55] I have, I personally have a belief and have since I was a little kid that it's easy for me to make and have friends. Never have really had any doubt about that. Not that every friendship I've ever had has gone perfectly or I've gotten along perfectly well or never had a disagreement with a friend, but I find friendships to be fairly easygoing. In other parts of my life, I found other relationships challenging.

[00:11:19] What barriers live in me that I have to remove in order to have a different experience? Because we teach here that consciousness creates. We teach here that there's a law pouring through us that uses our consciousness to draw people and experiences to us. And nowadays, even in the world of brain science, they're absolutely accepting and seeing that our brains, at the very least,

[00:11:46] even if you're not sure you've bought into that whole notion that we attract things to us, our brains absolutely scan environments always looking for what we already believe is true. Always looking for who we already think might be a fit for us. But the way we look and the way we do that search, as long as those barriers remain unhealed within us, is with barriers on board.

[00:12:14] And therefore, what happens is you think, Oh, that is the perfect job for me. Those people are amazing. That's the perfect person for me to be in relationship with. I just know they're perfect. And they are. They're perfect for you. In every way that you have great love to give, and in all your barriers. And every barrier that we have to love,

[00:12:43] deep, abiding, profound love, is activated in our closest relationships. Please tell me I'm not the only one in the room who's had that experience. This is the way it's designed. Not because anyone wants to punish us. But because in order to have love, true love, with any other human being, we have to be willing to walk

[00:13:10] the holy, sacred walk of profound growth. Growth that allows us to see those barriers as they rise up and say, Oh, I have a barrier that believes that I'm unworthy. And so every time this person says or does, I feel unworthy. I have a barrier within me that says I'm unlovable. Or I have a barrier that says that when I get criticized,

[00:13:40] I should run. Whatever it might be. And when we feel those barriers that are wreaking havoc within our relationships rise up, the temptation is to run. The person who wants to and chooses to fall into love, however, takes it on. It says this is an opportunity for me to grow. And I will do that work. I will oftentimes need to forgive the person who taught me that this was the way I should behave

[00:14:09] or taught me that belief about myself. I might have to do some work with a practitioner or someone to help me have a more objective viewpoint of myself. I might have to enter into conscious, active ways of loving and appreciating myself. New self-talk, whatever it might be. But I have to grow and I shall do it fearlessly and powerfully because I want to and I choose to

[00:14:39] experience deepened love within my relationships. This is the power of this. And it can be challenging. I found a comedian who wrote about relationships and had a few quips I thought I would share, romantic relationships, just to kind of give us a little levity for the day, who said, relationships are just two people constantly asking, what do you want to eat? This is my favorite. Marriage is like a walk in the park.

[00:15:09] Jurassic Park. Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is like juggling firewall blindfold. Yeah, it could be a little bit of that. But we are always being invited through all of our relationships, not just marriages or long-term commitment relationships, through all of our relationships to do that work, to grow, to step in, to remove the barriers, to allow those barriers

[00:15:39] to begin to fall away. Our founder, Ernest Holmes, says to us, there is no fear in love and there is no liberation from fear without love. Fear is always based on the supposition that we are unprotected, rejected, friendless. If the fearful mind would entertain love and the harmony and peace that go with it, then it must turn from everything that denies this love

[00:16:08] and trusting in divine guidance open its being to the influx of love. Not just the love of God, but love of everything. For love is an all-inclusive conception. So we allow ourselves to fall into love by falling into growth, profound growth, and knowing and accepting

[00:16:36] every relationship that you and I have with any other human being, whether we know them or not, our perceptions about every other being show us our barriers to love. And they're invitations to let go and to move more deeply and to ask ourselves, what would love do? And indeed, the next part then that comes right with that

[00:17:05] is the vulnerability to grow ourselves into, to fall into vulnerability, which is challenging. It's challenging from an interpersonal level, of course. We're talking about vulnerability with other human beings. to say to another human being, have a courageous conversation or work an issue out or come up against someone we vehemently disagree with and find a way to have conversations

[00:17:35] that are based in love and acceptance of each other. To fall into love this way and fall into vulnerability at that interpersonal level in the world of form is powerful and that in itself is a doorway into that deeper love that calls to us. That deeper love that is the divine love as us. And this isn't just some little romantic nice concept.

[00:18:03] This is a guiding force, a powerful force that supports us in everything and every way we choose to move forward. And it is an invitation constantly to firstly awaken to the reality that in order to experience and fall deeply into love, I've got to be vulnerable sometimes. I've got to share my heart.

[00:18:32] I've got to share my truth. And I've got to be vulnerable to the divine call within me. The divine call. And I say that we're vulnerable in this love because we often talk ourselves out of it so vehemently. I'd rather go on arguing to be right with you than listen to God's voice inside me. The love that lives inside me

[00:19:01] about what's mine to do. I'd rather be angry and righteous about things than really listen to how could I be a loving movement into the world of change and transformation in my family or in my work environment or in any part of my life. There's a deep call for us in that deep, deep listening. The human mind would say, I should be

[00:19:30] or do something, but the deeper part that wants to fall into love says, who am I going to be in this? And as I've been contemplating this this week, I've been collecting things that have arisen in me about this kind of vulnerability because I think it's really important for us to embrace it and understand it and choose it consciously because the most vulnerable love is a love that's transcendent

[00:20:00] of conditions and what is happening over there or out there. It's a commitment to say in our relationships, sometimes you don't say things that I like or I agree with. Sometimes you say things that I'm not happy you said. Sometimes you do things that just don't make any gosh darn sense, right? We all know human beings who do that. Don't squeeze anybody's hand sitting right next to them right now.

[00:20:32] But what we also know is that there's a deeper love that we can access that can guide us in those interpersonal relationships and in my relationships in every part of my life. A love that's transcendent of conditions that I can allow to have its way through me and in me and as me as I make choices about relationships. See, I think sometimes we think that it's either I'm a loving

[00:21:01] kind person or I'm a grumpy kind of pushy person. But there's this place that says I can be loving and be the most activated in love, fall into love, and have the most loving boundaries. Some of us are really good at that with children, aren't we? We can say to a child that we love, oh yeah, I know you want to go jump off that cliff and we're going to come over here, let's go over here,

[00:21:32] yeah, that would be really interesting, let's not do that. We can be very loving to kids but not so loving to other individuals. Maybe one pathway to love that I'm talking about is to see each other as a bunch of sweet children wandering the planet together and to be that love and to have boundaries if we need to have boundaries yet always in love, always

[00:22:01] in light, always in joy, always from that deep place. Also, an inclusive love, vulnerable love, this is vulnerable love, an inclusive love even of those who appear to oppose me. Isn't that what Jesus meant when he talked about loving our enemies, people who oppose us? I think my watch was just shining on Al's face, that's kind of interesting. Did I get you? To

[00:22:31] people who oppose us, to love our enemies, to step forward into that inclusive love. That's letting love have its way with us. That's falling into love. A love that is filled with guidance about what is mine to do and not too caught up in what you should do. A fall into love comes with a clarity. It's mine to take action in this way.

[00:23:01] It's mine to go out and make a change in this system or in this relationship or in our family or in the workplace. It's mine to go out into society and do something and that kind of falling into love never has what anyone else needs to be doing. It's clarity because it's loving for me and allowing that inner place within me to be guided while accepting and affirming that everyone else has that same guidance

[00:23:31] that same love on board that they can fall into and trusting that they're falling in to what serves them. A love that is born of a faith that no matter what happens I have whatever I need to meet the challenges. To me that's a bottom line thing that I'm striving for in being part of a spiritual community like this. It's kind of a

[00:24:00] thing that we hope for in spiritual traditions that if we get on the best side of God that no bad things will happen. Bad things just won't happen. The more spiritual you are the more your consciousness is clean the more loving you are that always good things will happen. But we know that's just not true is it? So we can't always spend our time defending against what if this bad thing happens what if that bad things happen but when I'm connected to

[00:24:30] that divine love within me the more powerful stance I have is no matter what occurs I can deal with it I can handle it I can move through it I can survive or I can thrive or I can make choices for myself that serve me and my relationship and my family and my life powerful way to live to fall into that and to me that is a vulnerability

[00:25:00] because it means that we've got to let go of control of this worldly form control that we think we can have when all the while love that voice of love that voice of divine love is calling to us and we can live a great life of love and joy I want to close with one of my other favorite quotes with Ernest Holmes

[00:25:30] he says the biggest life is the one that gives the most loves the most includes the most has the greatest understanding and greatest consciousness of eternal good and redistributes this good to the largest number of people to me this is a great life and it is the opportunity that's available to us if we are willing to fall into love

[00:26:00] and to allow ourselves to grow fall into growth and fall into vulnerability and in those two pathways of falling what emerges in us as us is the centeredness of us pure ready to be a loving presence of light this week as we go forth I urge us in all of our relationships in all of our choices in everything we do to take care of

[00:26:29] ourselves and other people I invite us to fall into love over and over and over and let's do that now together as we pray we fall into love I love how Dr. Barry always says we fall into our hearts and I invite our practitioner prayer partners to stand with me now as we pray this prayer together and remind us all that at the end of the service if there are opportunities before you or challenges before you that you'd like to receive

[00:27:06] pray for you and pray with you and here and now I stand in this prayer of the awareness of the divine presence that God is the truest love of all the guiding force the love that calls to humanity loudly and clearly and each one of us is living in

[00:27:36] through all things all people all experiences and allows us to more deeply fall into that sense of self as divine love that place where we accept and affirm who and what we are and we celebrate this love and feel the growth and the opportunity and the invitation into that vulnerable sweet space of letting go of

[00:28:05] all barriers that we have had up until now in our way to love deep profound love letting go and feeling the guidance of our own lives calling us forth and so we are absolutely the expression of this love and light this day and every day I accept and bless us in this awareness and absolutely

[00:28:35] affirm that we go forth from this place carrying this opening within us even the conversation and questioning more deeply anything about this love that allows us to open our hearts and our being to it we are blessed and I'm so grateful to accept and affirm this and it is in that blessedness that I just simply release

[00:29:05] this word into that law that makes it so I let it go I let it be I know that as it has been spoken it is done and I'm so grateful and so it is amen thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast this podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you to make a donation please visit milehighchurch.org