Steeping ourselves in a place, simmering in its bounties, celebrating its wonders, and loving its peculiarities are necessary steps on a spiritual journey. We often take for granted the places where we work and play. To get to know them again, or perhaps for the first time, involves acts of consecration and imagination. Or as Wendell Berry puts it: "My most inspiring thought is that this place, if I am to live well in it, requires and deserves a lifetime of the most careful attention."
If we have been called to unity, the way to God, for us, passes through our neighbor. It is through this passage, which may sometimes be as dim and dark as a tunnel, that one comes to the light. This is the mysterious path God invites us to take. Each day there are opportunities to perfect this art, a tiring one at times and exhausting, but always wonderful too, vital and fertile, the art of "making ourselves one" with other people: the art of loving.