Quotes about Presence

In response to their question "When will the Kingdom come?" he tells them that Ultimate Reality is "not here and not there," taking us away from our typical attachment to time. "For the Ultimate Reality is 'within you'!" (Luke 17:21).

The opposite of contemplation is not action, it is reaction.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other.… Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house."266

We have moved to a level where we have made happiness and contentment largely impossible. We have created a pseudo-happiness, largely based in having instead of being. We are so overstimulated that the ordinary no longer delights us. We cannot rest or abide in our naked being in God, as Jesus offers us.

The Holy Spirit is God desiring in you and through you—until it becomes your desiring too.

To pray is to build your own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within your house. To pray is to recognize that it is not your house at all.

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It's a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. The full contemplative is not just aware of the Presence, but trusts, allows, and delights in it.

My starting point is that we're already there. We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is

Every resurrection story seems to strongly affirm an ambiguous—yet certain—presence in very ordinary settings, like walking on the road to Emmaus with a stranger, roasting fish on the beach, or what appeared like a gardener to the Magdalene

Remember, it is not the brand name that matters. It is that God's heart be made available and active on this earth.

We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness

You cannot know anything spiritually by saying it is a not-that : you can only know it by meeting it in its precise and irreplaceable thisness and honoring it there.