Love without End, by Glenda Green.
This is a book my aunt Michele loaned me, saying it was the book that made her fall back in love with Jesus. It is about Glenda Green's miraculous conversations with Jesus as he posed for her painting. It's not the type of book I generally read, so I was a bit skeptical. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I found the beginning section rather inspirational - it described the events surrounding Green's conversations with Jesus. Although I tend to be a bit of a skeptic when it comes to this sort of miracle, I DO believe that Glenda had an inspired conversation - though perhaps only in her head. On a side not, according to Glenda's painting, Jesus has dazzlingly blue eyes and chestnut hair. :) I hear rumor that this fits the description of Jesus given in Heaven is for Real.
One point that I found interesting is Green's philosophy on loving your enemies: "When you are in the presence of your enemies, you know for a fact that any love you feel is not because of external factors...you know that you are love." In other words, love for your enemies is pure - it isn't tainted with lust or greed. I find this a beautiful way of looking at love.
Green's Jesus also had an interesting philosophy of "innocent perception." To Green, this was the action of seeing things as they are without categorizing the information with our minds. This idea reminded me a lot of the observe/describe of DBT - where you project a non-judgmental view on whatever you observe, and you describe not what you think, but what is (i.e. I feel a burning sensation on my tongue when I taste this food, instead of Mom put too much spice in the food.) This perception also reminded me of the philosophy of phenomenology.
Green's Jesus proposed a Trinity composed of Love, Spirit, and Adamantine Particles (a.k.a the Higgs Boson). This trinity made me chuckle a little - especially after all the recent news coverage of the Higgs Boson; however, it does have a certain appeal to it. I admit to knowing very little about the Higgs Boson other than the fact that it is nicknamed "The God Particle," and that Green suggests that it is a particle that creates mass and is unbreakable. But it's nice to think we're all connected by particles of God. :)
One issue I had with this book is that she put her emphasis in bold. And she used so much bolded emphasis that it became distracting! I assume this is because she decided to put Christ's words in italics. Funny thing is, she also put T. S. Elliot's poems in italics. ;)
