Does God have a will? Possibly in the sense that his creation is foreordained as good or beautiful. But in terms of the particulars of my life, I don't think so. I don't think we can do something for God as Marianne Williamson says when she defines miracles as 'asking God what we can do for him.' Of course it doesn't make much sense to think that we can actually do something for God that God hasn't already achieved. We might well be a tool or instrument in some sense in that we are his means presumably,though not merely puppets. But if spiritually we are whole and complete and lack nothing to be spiritually realized, then we are also not tools but ends in ourselves.
It seems the spiritual life is as much a matter of receiving as giving. Marianne seems to shift the emphasis to giving in “Return to Love.” Historically that's undoubtedly a great move either politically or psychologically if not spiritually. But the reciprocity of spirit seems to require giving as well as receiving. But what one receives may not happen as a simple matter of getting what is given from without by, say, an autonomous act of God whether responding to prayer or as reward of some sort.
Giving might be understood in a different way by analogy to the practice of interpretation. Hans Georg Gadamer argues in his ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ that in the creative or productive act of interpretation one does not exhaust the meaning of a text. In the act of interpretation one encounter a surplus of meaning which cannot be exhausted by the very nature of language itself. But Gadamer goes further in that the being that can be understood is not made less in producing its meaning but in fact becomes greater. It is not reduced to its meaning but in fact the meaning of its being grows and expands. One experiences an abundance of being and the possibility of creative interpretation becomes more.
In like manner when one gives of oneself, i.e., finds the will and resources to share and provide if not simply abide with the Other, then in fact one’s own being becomes more and greater. One finds access to one’s own gift as it returns in the abundance of the Love which one has given. One is not depleted or feeling empty in having given but one is renewed in seeing that contrary to the giving being a loss it is seen to come from an inexhaustible source.
The miracle lay in seeing that only when Love gives itself away does it realize that it is created out of nothing or out of everything. One’s loving enables the beloved to know love again and his/her being is again new. Love comes into being when one gives it away, especially when one realizes that no explicit attempt on the part of the other to equitably reciprocate is required.
In fact one can’t give love in the sense of giving it away. It’s expression is its expansion and manifestation as infinite. Love is not given but gifted and it is a gift which one has made, or better, made to happen. But this is not a doing but a letting go of all effort to do good or get love from the Other. Love is the most effortless when one sees that this is at the heart of one’s Life.
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