Deep joy and deep pain in the density of life

"The possibility of deep joy requires a commitment to the density of life. This however means an openness to the possibility of deep pain"

~ Peter Rollins

Yes, the density of life is deep and wide, and contains the possibilities of both deep joy and deep pain. One cannot truly exist without the other, and so it is by embracing deep pain that we experience deep joy. It is one of the paradoxes of life, just like it is by embracing fear that we experience peace.

This quote reminds me of a devotional by Henri Nouwen I read recently about mourning and dancing - like deep pain and deep joy, both have their place and belong to each other.

"[There is] a time for mourning, a time for dancing" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). But mourning and dancing are never fully separated. Their "times" do not necessarily follow each other. In fact, their "times" may become one "time." Mourning may turn into dancing and dancing into mourning without showing a clear point where one ends and the other starts.

Often our grief allows us to choreograph our dance while our dance creates the space for our grief. ... Let's trust that the beauty of our lives becomes visible where mourning and dancing touch each other."

~ Henri Nouwen

It appears that we need the seasons of life for a complete growth and an experience of diversity and variety in life. The summers produce harvest and fruitfulness while the winters produce strength and steadfastness. It enables us to maintain a balanced perspective of life, such that in our moments of deep joy, we maintain our human empathy to relate to the sufferings of deep pain, and in our moments of deep pain, we retain our human capacity to relate to the experiences of deep joy.

Love and the meaning of life

"If one believes that the world is meaningful, yet does not love, they cannot help but experience the world as meaningless. Yet if one believes that the world is meaningless yet loves, that person cannot help but experience their world as meaningful."
Peter Rollins

I can see the point in Peter Rollins's quote about love being the main factor in determining whether a person experiences their world as meaningful, and not the belief system the person professes. It is easy for anyone, especially in the religious circles, to dictate for oneself and others a certain set of beliefs to make life meaningful, but without love, these beliefs and actions are meaningless. For example, a preacher may tell the congregation to "give their lives to god" and "get involved in ministries" to live a "meaningful" life but these activities are only superficial acts mainly for show and not from the heart if people are just following orders and rituals.

In comparison, outside of organised religions, when people live freely and do not follow a prescribed set of rules, rituals and programs, though they may seem to live "meaningless" lives in the eyes of the religious, they are actually experiencing a meaningful life when they love themselves and others without any condition. They are living from the heart.

Love and the meaning of life go hand and hand, and transcend all religious, social and political boundaries, because they cannot be bound by dogma. Indeed, as noted in your question in YA, people who love usually do not need to preach about the meaning of life or follow any particular religion - they simply focus on living their own truth and expressing their own authentic self.

Embracing our divinity and humanity

"Salvation thus resides in transforming how we position ourselves in relation to this state. We can outline these various positions in this way,

We are broken and don’t acknowledge it (through repression, disavowal etc.)

We are broken and do realize it

We are broken and affirm it

This doesn’t mean that we simply accept difficult things in our lives and resign ourselves to them. Rather it means freeing ourselves from the idea that something will bring some final inner harmony and learning to work for small, incremental changes. In concrete terms this means that, if we are ill, we don’t wait for a sudden change, but take concrete medical action and attempt to face the illness. Or that we don’t hide away from the world in some compound (whether that is a real compound or our bedroom), imagining that it will be remade in a perfect way, but work up the courage to try and change how we live now.

The idea that there is some way of bringing wholeness and harmony into our lives is actually an ideology which acts against making real change here and now, thus rendering us more susceptible to those who promise that they have the diet, drug or divinity that would make everything perfect again."
~ From "Happiness is Not a Three-Step Dance" by Peter Rollins

My understanding of the above message is that we can embrace not only our divinity but also our humanity including all our brokenness and sorrows and pains. It is about accepting reality and being responsible for creating our own reality and working through our own struggles instead of waiting for some god in the sky to make everything alright. In doing so, we are working out our own salvation as we are our own saviours (or physicians).