O Loving Being! O Playful Creator! Love your way into the depths of my being today so that whatever I do will be a prayer, whether it be making bread or boiling water, visiting the sick or mowing the grass... May it all be an act of love and a feast of leisure. In all that I do, may I remember that I am a tabernacle of the Holy Mystery, a place where You dwell. May my moments of quiet listening at your feet lead me out again into the marketplace joyfully, gratefully, without complaining.
Lord, am I such a pain in the neck? I see you everywhere, yet turn from your presence in the faces of my wife and children. I look for your face everywhere and then spit in your face -- in the faces of those you give me to love ... and in whom you offered your love for me again and again in a million imperfect ways every day. I turn from them if they aren't just so -- just perfect. Nevertheless, your quiet is finally growing in me ... I want to calm my restless feelings, Lord, and look deeply into the faces of my family and see you face to face as we talk during our meal.
To see the face of God in those you love and live with takes consistent commitment and concentration. It is the same contemplative act that one experiences in the stillness and silence of solitary prayer and adoration. It takes simultaneous attention to the "without" and the "within", to self and to other. It is a paradox, a simultaneous joining while remaining solitary and separate. It resembles the act of physical touching and loving. It is separate togetherness and oneness experienced separately at the instant it is shared.