One more workday and I will have some personal freedom. I look forward to temporarily escaping secular time and living for a bit in the sacred time and rhythm of the monastery. It is always renewing for me when I am there. It also often gives me a new appreciation for the life I have in the world. Sometimes you can be too close to your own life to appreciate it. Stepping back and getting away, even if it's only for a few days, can change your whole perspective on life.
Here's something I read tonight by an old friend and teacher from my youth. His name is Father Richard Rohr. He is a Franciscan priest, renowned preacher, and author. He taught me much in my youth and I am still learning from him.
As Eckhart Tolle points out in The Power of Now, we don’t have to be in a certain place or even a perfect person to experience the fullness of God. God is always given, incarnate in every moment and present to those of us who know how to be present ourselves.
Strangely enough, it is often imperfect people and people in quite secular settings who encounter “The Presence” (Parousia, “fullness”). That pattern is rather clear in the whole Bible.
Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.
From Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, pp. 16
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