Quotes About Presence

God is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being."6 Notice how the language works. Where are we in relation to God? We are in God; we live in God, move in God, have our being in God. God is not "out there," but "right here," all around us.

Days pass, and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. Fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, "How filled with awe is this place . . .

All this means that we can add a fourth stroke to our historical portrait of Jesus. He was a first-century Jewish prophet, announcing God's kingdom, believing that the kingdom was breaking in through his own presence and work, and summoning other Jews to abandon alternative kingdom visions and join him in his.

Both Judaism and Christianity are about a "way." Indeed, the word "repent," so central to the Christian tradition, has its roots in the Jewish story of the exile. To repent does not mean to feel really bad about sins; rather, it means to embark upon a path of return. The journey begins in exile, and the destination is a return to life in the presence of God.

Its meanings include: The risen Christ journeys with us, is with us, whether we know it or not. Sometimes there are moments when we do recognize this.

All this means that we can add a fourth stroke to our historical portrait of Jesus. He was a first-century Jewish prophet, announcing God's kingdom, believing that the kingdom was breaking in through his own presence and work, and summoning other Jews to abandon alternative kingdom visions and join him in his. But what would happen if they refused?

In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced.

The human products of bread and wine become a means of grace, earthen vessels whereby the sacred becomes present to us. So also the Bible is sacrament, a human product whereby God becomes present to us. Its words become a means whereby the Spirit speaks to us in the present.

Respiraro, si te videro.

I exist in two places, here and where you are.

I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.

If you were a song What song would you be? Would you be the voice that sings, Would you be the music? When I am singing this song for you You are not empty air You are here, One breath and then another: You are here with me...

You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that's not there any longer.

That's who is waiting for me: an invisible man defined by a dotted line: the shape of an absence in your place at the table, sitting across from me, eating toast and eggs as usual or walking ahead up the drive, a rustling of the fallen leaves, a slight thickening of the air. It's you in the future, we both know that. You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that's not there any longer.

I began to forget myself in the middle of sentences.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing

In a fairy tale I would be one of the two stupid sisters who open the forbidden door and are shocked by the murdered wives, not the third, clever one who keeps to the essentials: presence of mind, foresight, the telling of watertight lies. I told lies but they were not watertight. My mind was not disciplined, as Arthur sometimes pointed out.

he was like smog: there were always some of his molecules in the air.

you appear without prelude midway between my eyes and the nearest trees, your colours bright, your outline flattened suspended in the air with no more reason for occurring exactly here than this billboard, this highway or that cloud.

The combination of presence and anonymity - confession without penance, truth without consequences - it has its attractions. Getting the blood off your hands, one way or another.