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.
Language... has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.
~ from THE ETERNAL NOW by Paul Johannes Tillich, thanks to Liz Stewart
God is creatively present in everyone in every moment whether we are aware of it or not. But when we are in the state of silent gratefulness, we are aware of God's Presence.
Sometimes at the momet of despair, a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted," accepted by that which is great than you.
We realize ourselves, when we discover God. We discover a reality that is identical to ourselves, although a realm that transcends us infinitely ... a reality from which we are estranged, but from which we can never be separated ... In reality, in our search to know God, we realize our true selves.
