This meditation invites you to welcome the extravengant and unconditional love, compasison and kindness of God to every part of yourself…

I wonder how many of us can really say that we know what it is to be unconditionally loved by God? We may have a sense of it in our head or heart but do we know it in those deeper places within? Do we know it in those moments when we behave in ways even we don’t like? In those places where we feel as if we’ve messed up for the thousandth time? In those moments when we’re angry, afraid and frustrated?

In those times and places, when we find it difficult or even impossible to have compassion for ourselves, can we make ourselves vulnerable and consent to God’s unconditional love for us?

When we’re confronted by our weaknesses or by our own challenging behaviours, by our propensities to selfishness, comparison or lashing out…. we can often want to “fix” ourselves, to pray these parts of ourselves away, to do something to eradicate what we don’t like about ourselves.

Carmelite Nun Ruth Burrows says…

What is the core, the central message of the revelation of Jesus? Surely it is of the unconditional love of God for us, for each one of us: God, the unutterable, incomprehensible Mystery, the Reality of all reality, the Life of all life. And this means that divine Love desires to communicate Its Holy Self to us. Nothing less! This is God’s irrevocable will and purpose; it is the reason why everything that is, is, and why each of us exists. We are here to receive this ineffable, all-transforming, all beatifying Love.

We must realise therefore, that what we have to do is allow ourselves to be loved, to be there for Love to love us…

We can so often be our harshest critic, and find it easy to treat ourselves with unkindness and a lack of compassion. We get frustrated with those parts of who we are that are still in transformation and feel stuck in ways of behaving that we find difficult to accept.  We can sometimes  get into a fight with these parts of ourselves, to chastise them, to feel shame about them or to want to push them away.

I invite you to bring all of you to the table – the good, the bad, the ugly. I invite you to come without shame, letting go of the fight for it to be any different, I invite you to receive the fullest, warmest, hugest welcome from God, to deeply hear that welcome and to say yes to it. Unconditional love reaches every part, welcomes every part, responds with grace and acceptance to every part.

There isn’t any part of us, however broken, stuck or angry that God does not accept, love and wholly welcome. Not one part of who we are is rejected or dismissed. There is nothing – NO THING about us, NO PART of us that God cannot look upon and love, accept and be in the very centre of.

Can we receive the grace to allow ourselves, on our worst days and in our worst moments,  to be welcomed by God and then to receive the grace to give the same welcome to ourselves? It’s in this place of radical, extravagant compassion and unconditional love that real change can be received.

This radical welcome is to be vulnerable enough to let all of ourselves to be seen, it takes courage to be seen so fully and yet when we let this happen the harshness towards ourselves softens graciously letting be what is knowing that we are loved in every moment of life, whatever that looks like. This isn’t resignation, this isn’t a decision to stop the work of transformation, this isn’t to deny that some of our behaviours and attitudes hurt ourselves and others. It is allowing everything at the table, it is to acknowledge without judgement or criticism every part of who we are. It is to extend extravagant grace to ourselves as we receive it from God. It is to accept that we’re human and to be human isn’t going to look like perfection or a removal of the shadow parts of ourselves.

So come to the table of grace – every part of you and feast on the love and compassion that is waiting there.