Awareness

Around here good books often get a second read.  Sometimes even more.  One of those which merited a second read is one written by Richard Rohr entitled, "Everything Belongs."  On one of the earlier pages, he writes about experiencing the presence of God.  "My starting point is that we're already there.  We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God.  What's absent is awareness." 

 

How many times have we thought about doing something like worship, or reading the Word, or praying as a way of experiencing the presence of God?  Most of us have had this as our goal many times on our spiritual journey.  We even often consider some of the problems we are facing and think that what we need in the midst of the difficulty is to get away somewhere so we can be in the presence of God our Father.  Maybe it is just a language issue, but it also seems more likely than not that Rohr nails it.  The spiritual issue is not presence, but awareness.

 

None of us would disagree with the truth that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are always with us.  Even a casual reading of the Word and an elementary understanding of the faith we profess brings us to such a conclusion.  The Holy Presence is always with us.  We never walk apart from His presence.  Even in those moments of agonizing loneliness and dark despair, we walk with the presence of God.  Circumstances have nothing to do with His presence.  What Rohr calls us to do is to live with an awareness that every step is taken in the presence and with the help of the Holy.  Even as we breathe air without being aware we are doing such a thing, so do we live constantly in the presence of the Holy One without any awareness that He is indeed with us.