We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.
The gift of contemplation is eternally given; it is always there... It is that moment when the ache in my heart becomes so intense that I can no longer bear it. And in that moment, I cry out in my agony to the One I never knew and have always known. It is the moment when the depth of the ache becomes the depth of the knowing, the moment when I know that I am in the Presence of God.