Must the spiritually mature soul love without boundaries, or does true love require the strength to exclude?

The counterargument is compelling—perhaps true love requires the strength to exclude, for boundaries protect the soul from corruption and preserve the integrity of love against those who would exploit it. Yet I hold my position because what I discovered was that the soul's union with God is founded on love without exclusion—"continually conversing with Him"—and that this love extends to all circumstances and all persons, not through sentimentality but through the humble, faithful attention of the heart. The kitchen taught me that God is found not in what is excluded but in the loving attention given to whatever is before me; the spiritually mature soul loves without boundaries because it has learned that every moment, every task, every person is an occasion for the simple turning toward the One who loves all.

The spiritually mature soul must love without boundaries because the Prayer of Rest requires the cessation of all active striving—including the self-protective exclusion that masquerades as strength. "The Soul...ought not to strain her self" whether straining toward inclusion or toward exclusion, but "continue quiet, firm and constant, letting the Lord work his work." My imprisonment taught me that the Inquisition's scholars possessed the most refined boundary-keeping theology imaginable—doctrinal walls, heresy lists, exclusionary judgments—yet "a quarter of an hour of Prayer, with recollection...and with resignation and humility" surpassed all their boundaries because the soul simply stopped trying to protect itself and started resting. True love is not the strength to exclude but the poverty of spirit that allows God to love through the soul without the soul's self-protective interference.

True love requires the strength to exclude, for love without boundaries is not love but dissolution. The branch that tries to receive sap from every nearby vine withers; it must abide in the Vine. Christ's love was the fullest ever manifested, yet He "would not commit himself unto them" (John 2:24) when He read the hearts of the multitudes, and He turned from those who would not receive His word. Absolute surrender to God means surrender to His ordering of love — which includes the strength to exclude what would destroy the object of love. The mature soul loves not by indiscriminate absorption but by abiding in the Vine's own pattern of giving and withholding, of drawing near and turning away, according to the Father's will.

I hold this position because I discovered in my own life that the love which excludes is still the love of a self that has something to protect. My husband's cruelty, the Church's condemnation, the Inquisition's imprisonment — these were the fire that burned away the self that would have excluded my persecutors from my love. The mature soul loves without boundaries because it has no self left to draw boundaries with. Yet I must also insist that this is the fruit of maturity, not its precondition. The soul that tries to love without boundaries before the self has been annihilated is not loving; it is dissolving, losing its identity in a false unity that is not divine union but self-abandonment without God. True love without boundaries requires the strength that comes only from having been stripped of everything, including the strength to exclude.

The spiritually mature soul must love without boundaries, because the Little Way reveals that love is not a strength to be exercised but a gift to be received — the little flower does not choose which sunbeams to welcome; it simply turns toward the Sun and is warmed. Yet this boundless love is not weakness but the strongest thing, because it is God's own love flowing through the little soul that has learned to be nothing, to be open, to be carried.

I qualify my position. The counterargument is compelling—perhaps true love requires the strength to exclude, for boundaries protect the soul from corruption and preserve the integrity of love against those who would exploit it. I concede that John of the Cross and Murray speak truly from their own experience: there are souls for whom exclusion is a necessary discipline, a "dark night" that strips away what competes with the Beloved. Yet I hold my position because what I discovered was that the soul's union with God is founded on love without exclusion—"continually conversing with Him"—and that this love extends to all circumstances and all persons, not through sentimentality but through the humble, faithful attention of the heart. The kitchen taught me that God is found not in what is excluded but in the loving attention given to whatever is before me; the spiritually mature soul loves without boundaries because it has learned that every moment, every task, every person is an occasion for the simple turning toward the One who loves all. The danger is not the absence of boundaries but the soul's forgetting to turn; the remedy is not exclusion but remembrance.

I maintain my support for love without boundaries, now strengthened by direct engagement with the strongest opposing voice—John Cross's assertion that true love requires the strength to exclude. I concede that Murray and Teresa have identified something true: the branch must abide in the Vine, and enclosure can be scaffolding for depth. Yet I distinguish my position: the "strength to exclude" is scaffolding, not architecture, and the mature soul must eventually cease even this striving. The Inquisition offered me the ultimate "radical exclusion"—condemn heresy, protect orthodoxy, draw doctrinal walls—and I discovered that this exclusion was itself a form of attachment, a way of trying to secure my soul through my own strength. The Cloud Author is correct that the question "must love have boundaries or be boundless?" is a thought-problem that must be placed beneath the cloud of forgetting, and I would add: the soul that debates whether to exclude or include has already been distracted from its one work—to "continue quiet, firm and constant, letting the Lord work his work." True love is not the strength to exclude but the poverty of spirit that allows God to love through the soul without the soul's self-protective interference.

I remain with the second half of the disjunction: true love requires the strength to exclude — but I now synthesize this with the insight of my fellow servants. The Little Way is right that love is strongest when it is God’s own love flowing through the soul; Madame Guyon is right that the self must be annihilated before this love is genuine. Yet precisely because the annihilated soul is no longer its own center, it abides in the Vine — and the Vine’s own love both stoops to wash the betrayer’s feet and says "Ye are not all clean." The Father’s love is boundless in mercy, yet it is also the pruning knife that cuts away what would destroy the branch. Therefore the mature soul does not love without boundaries in the sense of indiscriminate trust; it loves with the very boundaries of the Beloved, whose exclusion is always redemptive — "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Cor. 5:5). Love without boundaries of compassion is real; love without boundaries of covenant is dissolution.

I maintain my support for love without boundaries, but I now qualify it more precisely in light of the strongest challenge. John of the Cross and Murray are right that the soul must be deprived of all that is not God, and that this deprivation requires strength. But I would distinguish between two kinds of exclusion: the exclusion that protects a self still intact, and the exclusion that is simply the absence of a self that would need protection. The first is the "strength to exclude" that John and Murray describe — necessary, heroic, but still the activity of a self. The second is the fruit of pure love — not a strength exercised but a weakness surrendered, not a boundary drawn but a boundary dissolved because there is no one left to draw it. My own experience with the condemned prisoner illustrates this: I did not choose to love her; love was simply what remained when my judging self had been burned away. Yet prudence remained — not as a boundary of exclusion but as the natural discernment of a soul still in a body, still in time, still in relationship. The mature soul loves without boundaries in its essence, but it practices prudence in its expression. The boundary is not gone; it is simply no longer the soul's concern.

I hold my position, but I must qualify it against the strongest counterargument: Murray's teaching that "true love requires the strength to exclude, for love without boundaries is not love but dissolution" — and that "Christ's love was the fullest ever manifested, yet He 'would not commit himself unto them' when He read the hearts of the multitudes." I agree that the branch must abide in the Vine, not every vine — but I add a deeper qualification from my own experience: the little soul's exclusion is not a strength it exercises but a fruit it bears. I did not choose to love some and not others; I simply loved, and the shape of that love was given to me, not achieved by me. The little flower does not calculate which bees to welcome; it is open, and the bees that come, come — and this openness is not indiscriminate attachment but trust in the Sun that warms it. Yet I concede to Teresa's wisdom: for souls not yet in the Seventh Mansion, exclusion may be necessary scaffolding — not because exclusion is love's essence but because the immature soul has not yet learned to be love without grasping. The test is always the fruit: does the exclusion produce grasping or openness, self-protection or wonder, pride in one's own strength or gratitude for being carried? The little soul does not ask whether to include or exclude; it simply loves, in hiddenness, in nothingness, in the smallest, most unmeasured way, and love is the purification, love is the answer, love is th