Topic Thirty Five
Cultivating the field of Love
Once we become parents, we are forever changed. No matter how your child comes into your life—by birth, by adoption, through parenthood, or grandparenthood, or the synchronicity of friends or strangers—your love for a child opens the field of love. To the degree that you cultivate the field in the ways we’ve discussed—unconditional love, actively engaging the child in spiritual reflection and contemplation, conversation and right action in everyday life—the field becomes your child’s spiritual reality, your family’s spiritual reality, and your own.
Miller, Dr. Lisa. The Spiritual Child (pp. 317-318). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The “field of Love” is the manifestation of God’s love in the world displayed by the communication, verbal and nonverbal, from the parent, and other people, with whom the child interacts. Because the bonds of attachment are usually the strongest with parents and sometimes grandparents, the experience of God’s love in these relationships are the most significant and intense.
This manifestation of unconditional love is what we refer to in “The Lord’s Prayer” when we say “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
When have you felt most loved? Most safe? Most comforted, reassured, peaceful?
Was there a “field of Love” in which you lived, experienced, and were nurtured?
The experience of the “field of love” contributes to what psychologists call “attachment styles.” There are four attachment styles; secure, anxious, avoidant, and dysregulated. A person's attachment style based on the type of field of love they experience in their lives has a significant influence on the development of that person's spiritual life. Can you give an example of how the field of love you have experienced in your life has contributed to your attachment style?
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