Experiment in Love (Self-Control)

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From author Starr Daily's journal exercise of meditating on and attempting to put into practice in turn each of the various aspects of Love as explicated in 1 Corinthians 13.

The setting is the penitentiary hospital where he worked; a prisoner himself, and, a self-described "hardened criminal," he had experienced the healing intervention of Christ--you can read his autobiography at http://www.starrdaily.org/RELEASE.php--and had found himself compelled to follow Christ as the Living Way of Love.

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Love as "Self-Control"


"Last night I had the experience of compasssion. It was during one of those lulls that often come in the wards between ten and twelve, when the patients are still awake but quiet and undemanding.

I took advantage of the condition, went into my room, and wooed the meditative mood. When I felt what I thought a sufficient depth of stillness I chose one of my patients, a man doomed to a very slow and increasingly painful death, according to medical diagnosis. With him as my focal point, I began a will-directed course of mental prayer. Somehow I was guided not to pray for his recovery; but rather to pray that he be laid upon my heart as a prayer burden which I could then pass on to the Burden Bearer.

As I continued steadfast in this mental prayer I began to sense an inner creeping of the Love sentiment for the man. It was first manifested as a deep sympathy for him and his family. I was sorry for his people, and I pitied him because of his mis-spent life and wasted energies and opportunities. Gradually my feelings expanded into a more refined Love in which the appearances of sickness and family tragedy passed away, and I saw him and his family, not as they were, but as they ought to be and could be. This was a glorious family portrait cast in cosmic lights and overtones of significance. Then there welled up within me an overwhelming compassion for the patient. In this the burden of him was not shifted to the Burden Bearer; but was now unbelievably heavy on my my own heart. Now the suffering that he was passing through I felt. His defeat was my defeat; his sins were mine; what he was and all he had been I shared as though it were my own.

I was under an almost impossible pressure to run to him with my tear-filled eyes and smother him with expressions of Love in my heart. But I was under discipline, and my need for reserve, naturalness, and control. While in the throes of compassion, I entered his room as often as I could without arousing his curiosity and with detached conversation and ordinary professional manners I let my feeling flow toward him. On one of those visits I had the experience of feeling him in union with God. At the moment I had that experience he interrupted something he was saying and made a sharp digression. 'I have no pain,' he said. 'I feel so strange. And I'm getting sleepy.' He was sound in sleep when I left the room. He slept the night through for the first time.

...Had I gone to his room and spilled my Love over him in a wild emotional torrent he might have been confused by it, and he might have reacted destructively against it. Who knows?

I do know that it is difficult to control Love emotions which seem uncontainable. That opportunity gave me a hard discipline. One of the hardest so far encountered...But an overwhelming Love must be offered a stable vessel of behavior. Behavior is the channel through which the current of Love must flow...

My impulse right now is to give this same discipline my attention again tonight. My experience of last night makes me want to recapture it by the same discipline. But it is a part of my discipline to move on with Paul, and if need be sacrifice the possible joy for a possible discomfort....The adventure moves on."

from THE WAY OF HOLY AFFECTION by Starr Daily, 1965

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