“Free will is critical in a loving relationship because there cannot be love without the opportunity to oppose that love. There cannot be an appreciation without the opportunity to express it through choice. If we are made in the image of the Divine, then just as God has free will, we must also have it. The difficulty arises in our inability to understand, or accept, that it is not beneficial to try to use our free will separate from God. This is because we are part and parcel of God, a tiny fragment of the whole, but we are not the complete whole. As part of the whole, our function is to serve the whole. The whole is certainly not meant to serve the part. For example, imagine if your stomach tried to eat on its own and told your mouth, "I'm tired of you always taking the food first. I think I should get it first."”

“Love is that which is without condition, it requires nothing in order to be expressed. It asks nothing in return. And it is free. Love is that which is free, for freedom is the essence of what God is, and love is God, expressed.”

“I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people," Paul says. "That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”

“If we must love God, and love him more than ourselves and our neighbor, it is because love exists before us and because we are issued from it; we love by virtue of our very existence.”

“I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.”

“An even more basic reason why we are commanded to love is expressed explicitly in Jesus' words, "love your enemies…. that ye may be children of your father which is in heaven." We are called to this difficult task in order to realize a unique relationship with God. We are potential sons of God. Through love that potentiality becomes actuality. We must love our enemies, because only loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of His holiness.”

“We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.”

“We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.”

“Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”

“The inward stirring and touching of God makes us hungry and yearning; for the Spirit of God hunts our spirit: and the more it touches it, the greater our hunger and our craving. And this is the life of love in its highest working, above reason and above understanding; for reason can here neither give nor take away from love, for our love is touched by the Divine love. And as I understand it, here there can never more be separation from God. God’s touch within us, for as much as we feel it, and our own loving craving, these are both created and creaturely; and therefore they may grow and increase as long as we live.”