We must not lose hope: God is always and forever at work in the soul and in history. Even this secular world continues to produce mystics and saints.

Men and women are still falling in love with God, especially after they realize how much God has loved them when they were unlovable—and how God trusted them when they could not trust themselves, and how God forgave them when they could not forgive themselves. Be honest, what else would make you fall in love with God?

-Richard Rohr

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – I thank you, my God, for having in a thousand different ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings you implanted in me as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to the successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo: through all these I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made one.

The Angel that presided ‘oer my birth
Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,
“Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.”
-William Blake

For power is made perfect in weakness.’. . . For whenever I am weak, then I am strong. – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

R. Rohr – Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our own successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection should be. We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need a hope larger than ourselves.

Until we walk with personal issues of despair, we will never uncover the Real Hope on the other side of that despair. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death. Remember, death is an imaginary loss of an imaginary self, that is going to pass anyway.

This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal.

Miracles are nothing other than God’s ordinary truth seen with surprised eyes. – Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

1 PRV 30:5-9

Every word of God is tested; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Add nothing to his words,

lest he reprove you, and you will be exposed as a deceiver

Two things I ask of you,

deny them not to me before I die: Put falsehood and lying far from me, give me neither poverty nor riches; provide me only with the food I need; Lest, being full, I deny you, saying, “Who is the LORD?” Or, being in want, I steal, and profane the name of my God.

Loving God, we love how you love us. We love how you free us. We love what you have given and created to surround us. Help us to recognize, and to rejoice in, what has been given, even in the midst of what is not given. Help us not to doubt all that you have given us, even when we feel our very real shortcomings. We thank you for the promise and sign of your love in the Eternally Risen Christ, pervading all things in the universe, unbound by any of our categories of logic or theology. We offer you ourselves back in return. We offer you our bodies, our little lives, our racing minds, and our restless hearts into this one wondrous circle of Love that is You. My life is no longer just about me; it is all about you. – Richard Rohr