THE PRESENCE OF GOD

“I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air.”
~ Anonymous

Consider how the sun continually lights our daily world, yet we cannot see light except in what it touches. Though the sun burns constantly and holds everything living within its pull, though it sends its power across millions of miles, it is unseen for all that way, until it hits a simple blade of grass or makes the web of a spider a golden patch of lace.

In the same way, the presence of God powerfully moves between us unseen, only visible in the brief moments we are lighted, in those enlivened moments we know as love.

For just as we can look at that spider web and never see its beauty until it reveals itself in sudden light, we can look upon the nearest face, again and again, never seeing the beauty in each other, until one or both of us is suddenly revealed. Spirits show themselves in just this way, or rather, our gentleness of heart allows us to see and be seen.

It makes our search for love a humble one. For what is there to do but grow in the open and wait.

~ Take something familiar to you, something you see daily - your shoes, your comb, your letter opener - and place it outside in the light.

~ Now leave it be for the moment, and meditate on the general presence of love as you experience it.

~ After a while, look with your heart’s eye on the familiar object in the sun.

~ Note how it seems to come alive.

~ Realize your heart is now in the sun.

~ Feel how it has come alive.

The Book of Awakening

~ Mark Nepo