Quotes About Presence

In my case, the attention deficit was all mine. I had moved to the country in order to lie down in more blessed fields, to live closer to the Divine Presence that had held me all my life, but I had once again become so busy caring for the household of God that I neglected the One who had called me there. If I still had plenty of energy for the work, that was because feeding others was still my food. As long as I fed them, I did not feel my hunger pains.

We wanted More. We wanted a deeper sense of purpose. We wanted a stronger sense of God's presence.

Prayer, according to Brother David, is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing. When I am fully alert to whatever or whoever is right in front of me; when I am electrically aware of the tremendous gift of being alive; when I am able to give myself wholly to the moment I am in, then I am in prayer. Prayer is happening, and it is not necessarily something that I am doing. God is happening, and I am lucky enough to know that I am in The Midst.

Maybe someone should start an Opaque Church, where we could learn to give up one kind of vision in hope of another. Instead of wearing name tags, we would touch each other's faces. Instead of looking around to see who's there, we could learn to listen for each other's voices.

Consciousness. That was it! The difference between my ordinary urban life and my wooded Tantric retreats was consciousness. If I could be completely conscious and present in each moment, it wouldn't matter whether I practiced Tantra in Bali or on the Bowery. Not only would location not matter, but neither would strict adherence to "traditional" Tantric practices. Anything I performed with complete consciousness would be completely alive, authentic, and transformative.

Kindly keep your emotions for some time when I am not present.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.

strangely, he wasn't in the mood to look at files and papers. Not with Heather Cole to look at. For that matter, even the journals might have fallen short—a shocking thought, but one he wasn't about to analyze at the moment. "I wasn't sure you'd be here, and

out. He watched her when they were at Kate's tennis

Not all of us need to spend every second of our lives trying to get somewhere other than where we are. Not all of us have to grab the brass ring on the carousel. Some of us just like to go around and enjoy the ride.

His dark brown hair was on the short side, and he had an air of

A few," she admitted. "But not too many. This house doesn't really hold my memories. Our family home—the one we lived in when my mom was alive—was much harder to give up. But I've learned that love isn't in what we have; it's who we're with. I'm just glad I'm with you.

his cell phone; he could have been anywhere.

The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.

To be in your children's memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.

To be in your children's memories tomorrow, You have to be in their lives today.

We can choose to gather to our hearts the thorns of disappointment, failure, loneliness, and dismay due to our present situation, or we can gather the flowers of God's grace, unbounding love, abiding presence, and unmatched joy.

The thing about Howard was, you could be with him and talk or you could be with him and not talk. He liked you either way.

Where Am I Touching?

To Savor The Scene, A Book, or A Friend.

Having someone else in the house, a large, clever, overbearing yet indifferent presence, mitigates loneliness not at all.

Stimulated by the enemy's presence on the Loire in the center of France, the nobles responded to the summons, whatever their sentiments toward the King. They came from Auvergne, Berry, Burgundy, Lorraine, Hainault, Artois, Vermandois, Picardy, Brittany, Normandy. "No knight and no squire remained at home," wrote the chroniclers; here was gathered "all the flower of France.

Our misconception in viewing the past lies in assuming that doubt and fear, permit, protests, violence and hate were not equally present.

The Germans were obsessively concerned about violations of international law. They succeeded in overlooking the violation created by their presence in Belgium in favor of the violation committed, as they saw it, by Belgians resisting their presence.