What do I love when I love God?

 

 Jurgen Motlmann's response to Augustine's "What do I love when I love God?"

When I love God I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of
movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings,
the scents, the sounds of all this protean creation. When I love
you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all
my senses in the creations of your love. In all the things that
encounter me, you are waiting for me.

For a long time I looked for you within myself and crept
into the shell of my soul, shielding myself with an armour of
inapproachability. But you were outside - outside myself - and
enticed me out of the narrowness of my heart into the broad
place of love for life. So I came out of myself and found my soul
in my senses, and my own self in others.

The experience of God deepens the experiences of life. It
does not reduce them. For it awakens the unconditional Yes to
life. The more I love God, the more gladly I exist. The more
immediately and wholly I exist, the more I sense the living
God, the inexhaustible source of life and eternal livingness.

Moltmann, A Broad Place: An Autobiography, 349-50