As I sat in meditation this morning, the Lord said to me, “My love to you is without limit, without measure, without end.  It reaches far beyond what you can see, what you can touch, what you can hear.  But it is not beyond what you can know.  Open your heart. Let go of all limitations you have set and know my love. Know me.”

“Know you, Lord?  That’s a big order. I want to know you, even as you know me.  I can’t see how it can really be, but I do set my heart to know.”

As I say this, it occurs to me that I put a lot of emphasis on getting to know me, finding who I truly am; and maybe it is hard to see that because I don’t truly know the Lord.

“Right,” he said.  “Get to know me, and you will begin to know yourself. You are, after all, made in my image. You are glorious. You are beautiful.”

Hmmm, I think. So as I come to see and to know God in truth, I can start to see and know me that way too. I can start to know me as he knows me. Interesting.

This makes me think of The Man of La Mancha, one of my favorite musicals. I’m reminded of the relationship of Don Quixote with Aldonza.  Don Quixote comes to an inn, which he thinks is a castle, and he meets Aldonza, a whore who he thinks is an esteemed, elegant damsel named Dulcinea.  (Dulce, in Spanish, means sweet.) He treats her as such – with the honor due a respected damsel; and she despises him for it. She kicks back. She yells at him in anger, rejecting his kindness, “Why do you call me Dulcinea? Why do you say those things?!”

Yet Don Quixote is so fully convinced of her honor that he is blinded by his convictions. All he sees is a pure virgin. He addresses her with respect, and with love.  The result?  Eventually Aldonza melts and stops fighting him. She stops rejecting his comments about her.  She — perhaps for the first time — begins to see herself in new light, as someone to be loved and respected.

I keep thinking how that God is like that – seeing me in purity, telling me I am pure and lovely, whispering it in my ear. And for many years I would kick back, angry that he would say those things because I knew they were not true.  I knew they were not me; that I was not what he was describing.  That I was not loveable.  And yet here, in recent days, like Aldonza I’ve actually started to believe it . . .