The Gentiles were delighted when they heard this
and glorified the word of the Lord.
All who were destined for eternal life came to believe,
and the word of the Lord continued to spread
through the whole region. …
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
- Acts 13:48-49, 52
 
Jesus said:
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”
- John 10:27-30
 
Last week’s reflection explored “the grace place,” an understanding and experience that God is in all and all is in God, such that in this awakening to the one reality, we apprehend “pearls in a parking lot, love letters in a tip and a treasure in every field,” and may even experience graced steadiness and hope in the chaos of fires, floods, conflicts of all kinds, personal loss and diminishment. St. Augustine said it this way: “When the truth is revealed to us in this deep way it gives us a picture of God’s very nature, which cannot be perceived with any eye. … There is nowhere that God does not exist. God is completely present everywhere. (On Seeing God)”
 
God is in all and all is in God. We come to live and move and have our being in the deep knowing that grace always comes, grace is always present, and we can even be a grace place for others.
 
Each of you reading this reflection are destined for this understanding and experience, otherwise you wouldn’t be a contemplative practitioner and you wouldn’t be attracted to a program like this one. Your life and where you place your intention and attention are already an unfolding of your own destiny – the lived experience of eternal life here and now, in abiding union with Beloved Presence, which is present in the most unexpected ways and forms in your own life, as it is.
 
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
 
Meditations:
 
"Jesus in the parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:16-23) undercuts the facile conviction that we know with certitude what moral good and evil actually are. The certitude renders us incapable of finding God in what, in our view, is moral evil. … A tragedy or disaster may be the only circumstances that can move us beyond our prepackaged values and preconceived ideas to a deeper level of relating to God in trust, self-surrender, and love. … Hence we would be naïve to exclude God from any situation that arises in our lives. … Wherever anything is, God who is ‘isness’ must be present; otherwise, there is nothing to hold any particular expression of ‘is-ness’ in existence. …

“The Spirit fills the whole, every cell and, indeed, every particle of every cell. … Since we are made up of trillions of them, we are truly immersed in Christ at all times. In other words, we are saturated with God. … so we do not have to become anybody. … We only have to be what we are already, which is … the beloved child of God.”
- Thomas Keating, Manifesting God and That We May Be One: Christian Non-Duality
 
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“Did you ever sit with a friend and share a meal, or a drink, and experience an ineffable bond, a quality of relationship that cannot be adequately described because words cannot grasp the depth of the space in-between, which is no longer space but a living flame of love? I remember one time being with a good friend. We were just hanging out, not doing much, just talking about the little things of life. Yet, in that moment, I was conscious of an ineffable ‘being with,’ a belonging, in such a way that I thought, ‘This must be what heaven is like.’ In that moment, I had the experience of joy, peace, and true happiness.
 
“Such moments are the precious bonds of human relationships. … They emerge, often spontaneously, from a deep goodness that flows from one person to another. We can name this ineffable bond of love God’s Spirit, for indeed where two or more are gathered in the openness of shared life, there is God.
 
“In the end, the only thing that will matter will be how well we loved. … Heaven opens where we are and invites us in as we are. The moral of the story is that grace is everywhere and love abounds, but it must be received and celebrated. This is the sacrament of everyday life.”
- Ilia Delio, The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey
 
To Practice:

• Re-read these passages in the manner of Lectio Divina.  What do you hear for your journey now? Is there an active prayer sentence or affirmation that you can pray with throughout the week?
• During the next week, pay attention to the small and ordinary graces in your life, without effort, without reflection.  Receive and celebrate the sacrament that is your life. 
• Post your reflections on the community forum here.  Post prayer requests here. By clicking on the Subscribe link on the right-hand side of a thread, you can receive email notifications when someone posts a comment or a prayer request. 

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