To live consciously aware of the presence of God in every moment is a great grace. I am still not sure if it is cultivated and then given --- or given and then cultivated. I lean toward the latter position because it is my own experience. I never “merited” God. I simple grew in God. It is a very different thing. Church --- sacraments --- nourished the presence but, I am sure, I did not create it. I would be in God with or without the Catholic Church.
Once we empty ourselves of the certainties, we open ourselves to the mystery. We expose ourselves to the God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” We bare ourselves to the possibility that God is seeking us in places and people and things we thought were outside the pale of the God of our spiritual childhood. Then life changes color, changes tone, changes purpose. We begin to live more fully, not just in touch with earth, but with the eternal sound of the universe as well.
Joan Chittister, Called to Question, a Spiritual Memoir
