Quotes About Presence

But the first Christians didn't see Jesus this way, as if God were somewhere else and then cooked up some way to solve the sin problem at the last minute by getting involved as Jesus. They believed that Jesus was somehow more, that Jesus had actually been present since before creation and had been a part of the story all along.

What does it mean to never be separated from love? Is that how you live every day? In every thought, are you constantly reminded that love is the ground of your being?

God is always present. We're the ones who show up.

At any moment in the day, you can only do one thing at a time. And the more intentional you are about knowing what your 1 is, the more present you will be.

This is a book about seeing, about becoming more and more alive and aware, orienting ourselves around the God who I believe is the ground of our being, the electricity that lights up the whole house, the transcendent presence in our tastes, sights, and sensations of the depth and dimension and fullness of life, from joy to agony to everything else.

God is in the best, and also the worst. God is in the presence, and also in the absence. God is in the power, and also in the powerlessness.

God is not a question about what may or may not be up there or above or out there— God is what we're unquestionably in.

You start with your 1 and then you suspend judgment on what you're doing, because you don't know what you have when you start. When you are constantly judging what you're doing, you aren't here. You aren't present. You are standing outside of your life, looking in, observing. The time for judgement will come at some point, but in the moment, you have only the 1. And then the 2. And then the 3...

Worry is lethal to thriving because it's a failure to be fully present. Worrying about something means you're there, not here

The question, then, the art, the task, the search, the challenge, the invitation is for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the ruach

Nerves are God's gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by. Make friends with the butterflies.

When we spent a day being fully present, we quickly discovered how much of the rest of our lives we weren't fully present.

Sabbath is when you spend a day remembering that efficiency and production are not God's highest goals for your life. Joy is.

Sabbath forces you to listen to your life. Sabbath is a day when you are fully present to your pain, your stress, your worry, your fear. Sabbath is when you let whatever you've pushed down rise to the surface. Sabbath is a day when things that are broken get fixed, when things within you that have torn are mended.

Begin whatever you're doing by remembering that you are here and you have been given a gift.

read the story in the book of Genesis about Jacob waking up from a dream and saying, Surely God was in this place, and I, I wasn't aware of it. Jacob is waking up from a dream, but he's waking up in a larger sense as well, to the divine presence in all of life.

If you are looking for a particular response to bring you joy, that response may never come. The joy comes from being fully present in this moment. The reward is in throwing yourself into it right here and now.

I felt this new life surging up within me. I don't need people to be anywhere else. I can meet everybody where they are.

By the way, when the writer John in the book of Revelation gets a current glimpse of the heavens, one detail he mentions about crowns is that people are taking them off [chap. 4]. Apparently, in the unvarnished presence of the divine a lot of things that we consider significant turn out to be, much like wearing a crown, quite absurd.)

What is your 1? At any moment in the day, you can do only one thing at a time. And the more intentional you are about knowing what your 1 is, the more present you will be.

This extraordinary technology that makes it possible for us to connect with someone on the other side of the world also disconnects us from the person on the other side of the table. Be intentional about what you're doing and when you're doing it. If you're with a person, be with them.

Polyconsciousness is what one researcher termed the resulting state of mind that divides attention between the physical world and the one our devices connect us to, undermining here-and-now interactions with actual people and things around us.

What we do with our attention, in short, is at the heart of what makes us human.

A surprising number of representatives," the Saturday Evening Post reported, "knew his hat and coat, when it hangs on its accustomed peg in the House restaurant"—a discreet reference to the fact that many Congressmen checked to see that he was present before they entered the restaurant, lest they be forced to pay for their meals themselves.