Twenty years ago, when I was near death from a life-threatening illness, a vivid dream was more real than life. Floating out of my body, I rose up, up, and up inside the clouds above. With no door visible, I nevertheless knocked, repeatedly demanding entry. The sky whitened with my greeting as a Large Voice stated, "You have got a lot of work to do. "It sent me down, down back into my body with the life-long question: What is my Work? Is my present action leading to my Work?
God is directly present in the person who has the pure heart of a child and who laughs and cries and dances and sings in divine ecstasy.
How great is the difference between the secret friend and the child. For the friend makes only loving, living, but reasoned ascents toward God, but the child presses on to lose his or her own life upon the summits in that simplicity which does not know itself. When we transcend ourselves and become in our ascent toward God so simple that the bare, supreme love can lay hold on us, then we cease, and we and all our self will die in God. In death we become the hidden children of God and find a new life within us.