Notes by Doug Muder (1997)

The work of attention: "Keeping one's eye on a four-year-old at the beach, concentrating on an interminable disjointed story told by a six-year-old, teaching an adolescent how to drive, truly listening to the tale of your spouse's day at the office or laundromat, and understanding his or her problems from the inside, attempting to be as consistently patient and bracketing as much as possible--all these are tasks that are often boring, frequently inconvenient and always energy-draining; they mean work." [page 130]

The risk of loss: "On some level spiritual growth, and therefore love, always requires courage and involves risk. … Grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain." [pages 131-133]

The risk of independence: "If you observe the healthiest of children you will see not only eagerness to risk new and adult activities but also, side by side, a reluctance, a shrinking back, a clinging to the safe and familiar, a holding on to dependency and childhood. Moreover, on more or less subtle levels, you can find this same ambivalence in an adult, including yourself, with the elderly particularly tending to cling to the old, known, and familiar." [page 137]

The risk of commitment: "Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving relationship. Anyone who is truly concerned for the spiritual growth of another knows, consciously or instinctively, that he or she can significantly foster that growth only through a relationship of constancy." [pages 140-141]

The risk of confrontation: "Possibly the greatest risk of love is the risk of exercising power with humility. … The loving person is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved's own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership." [pages 150-151]

"There are, then, two ways to confront or criticize another human being: with instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right, or with a belief that one is right arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination. The first is the way of arrogance. … The second is the way of humility." [page 152]

"Those who truly love, and therefore work for the wisdom that love requires, know that to act is to play God. Yet they also know that there is no alternative except inaction and impotence. Love compels us to play God with full consciousness of the enormity of what we are doing." [page 155]

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