spring

Grace is what happens when openness to chance yields a deeper awareness of the cosmos or one’s place in it . . . when luck leads to spiritual insight . . . Proust called chance experiences "earth experience of grace."

Grace is what happens when openness to chance yields a deeper awareness of the cosmos or one’s place in it . . . when luck leads to spiritual insight . . . Proust called chance experiences "earth experience of grace."

Grace happens! Grace seldom comes as a profound, single, life-changing event. More often it emerges as a whisper, yet it can carry a person through the next few hours or even days: mornings when I shared bagels and coffee with a friend who listened, offerings of food when I could not begin to plan dinner for the family, phone calls that came at those low moments to lift my spirits and remind me that I was still connected with others, the memorable sermon or anthem that touched my soul in a way I cannot describe. Grace happens!

We must suppose that we go deep within ourselves, deeper and deeper into our most hidden self. There in our innermost being, in the very core of ourselves, we will find a place where there is peace, stillness, and above all, love.

After having found the place, we must imagine that we are seated there, immersed into, surrounded by the Love of God. We are in deepest peace . . . All of us is there, physical body and all; nothing is outside, not even a fingertip, not even the tiniest hair. Our whole being is connected with the Love of God.

Nothing will remain.

To love is not a state; it is a direction.

Our lives are interwoven; use me as You will.
We are bound together, in You I am strong.
Every strand of my life is filled with Your presence.
In Your hands my life has purpose and meaning.
Bind me close with cords of love.

Love's direction guards us not against grief but against hardening of the heart.

Separation, fragmentation, fear, insecurity, hostility result because we have lost touch with the continuum of life that is the Source of all creation. When we are there we realize that the self is no other than this unity, and this unity is no other than the self. With this realization comes compassion. With compassion comes love, and with love comes peace . . . When love rises in us, it will rise in the world as a whole. A new reality will be apparent that is laid on the foundation of health, happiness, and personal freedom.

The glory of God is every creature fully alive and, therefore,
we live to give God glory by loving the world
and everything in it.

"It is the time you waste on our flowers that makes your flowers unique," the Little Prince said when he realized that the world was full of flowers that looked just like his own. It is love that transforms the vast unknowable, the anonymous universe with all its chaotic eruptions of pain and joy, its life and death, with a world that we can live in and make sense of in some way.