Quotes About Presence

I sing to the geese. And I feel her. It's different from remembering her or yearning for her. I feel her near me. I don't know if she is the geese or the river or the sky or the moon. I don't know if she is outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her. A brief, easy exchange.

It is a subtle violence, the violence of absence.

I don't know if she is outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her.

Tomorrow after you leave I will stand here at this window and remember that yesterday you were right here with me.

I felt something that was almost a cool wind against my arms and face, but not a wind, not even a breeze, just an air current that felt different, as if someone ten feet away had opened the lid of an ice box briefly. I reached out to feel it and, as if I had beckoned it, a great gust struck against my hand. All at once the trees shuddered and the grass skirt about the house swished.

For me, other people are the point, but other people can disappear.

Death lies not in being dead, but in acting dead.

with me an instant before

When we show love to others, God's presence is with us.

Sometimes we forget we're on an adventure with the Lord and that his presence is with us.

Miracles are not about praying the perfect prayer; miracles are about what happens when we welcome God's presence and power into our situations and our lives.

When you understand that God is with you, that changes everything.

We are no longer kidnapped, for we walk with God and his spirit lives inside us.

And I'll be around, Rose. I'll be there all the time. When you're working I'll ring you up from school and remind you to take your medication. I won't go away for weeks and months at a time. You'll know where I am and it will never be far away.

Already what I remember most is the happiness of seeing you. Having tea. Falling asleep. Waking up with you there awake in the kitchen. It was like being alive twice. I'll try to tell you better when I am stronger.

Remembering place is significant, and that includes each visitor to a place, insect, plant, animal, or the passing shadow of a cloud in golden sunlight.

And then we heard the train from a long ways off. It was how sound traveled her, where sometimes a sound from miles away seemed close at hand, and at other times a person in the same room sounded far away, distant and remote.

Quiet your mind through prayer and meditation Scripture admonishes us to meditate day and night on God's Word. It brings physical, emotional, and spiritual healing and peace to our minds. When thoughts are racing in my head and I cannot sleep, I will often focus on a portion of Scripture or on the name of Jesus. Meditation allows us to just be in the moment with God. It stops everything else and brings attention to the here and now. It makes us aware of His presence.

God scares me when you get Him indoors.

I miss you every time that we say goodbye, even though I know I will see you the next day. I miss you when you are across the room, and I can see you. I miss you when you sit beside me and I cannot touch you.

For the longest time I was so sick I didn't have the strength or inclination to read, but looking at my books stacked up on the bedside table was comforting, like having old friends sitting in the room with me, friends who didn't require anything of me, friends who brought me great pleasure just with their presence, waiting until I could engage with them again.... bibliophiles know the inanimate pleasure of the friendship with books.

I sensed it was finally safe to ask the question without seeming like an ingrate. God? Where were you? For 107 days where were you? Where were you in my unconsciousness and where were you in that hospital room when I wanted to feel your presence with fireworks and explosions of emotions and supernatural palpability? Where were you, God? [...] I was there, my child, [...] I was the peace, I was the breath, I was the comfort.

My father had the rare ability to make others feel as though they were the one and only. That they were seen, heard, chosen. He would take you by the hand and say, Come with me, and for a brief or a long moment you might think you were the first person he has ever said this to. That it was you and him against the world.

Live innocently; God is here.