Reims Cathedral, detail.
February 27.
It's generally not sensed by human beings, but a great Good surrounds us and flows into us at all times.
Our organisms were originally designed by nature to receive and perceive this great Good, and to directly and perpetually benefit from its influence. But something in us has atrophied, and our spiritual senses no longer participate.
Instead, we’re heavily invested in our imagination about life, which constantly drives us forward into a wide variety of insanities.
The truth and goodness of life are always within the immediate range of our attention, if we serve it. We thus serve truth and goodness with our attention; and when we do, it pays us back in every moment ten thousandfold. This is a true thing worth far more than gold.
What both God and life request of us is that we serve with this attention, if we can find it – recover it.
I speak of this great goodness simply because it dwells in the small things which we pay no attention to. Properly understood, there's far more goodness in a grain of dust or a bite of cereal than there is in a nation; and there is far more goodness in the immediate moments of life than any goodness one can find in any other place, simply because there is no other place to look except here and now.
If I look quite carefully within this here and this now, and I open myself to the authority of the goodness which surrounds me — a goodness which flows naturally from within all Being into all Being – I discover a perfection. It isn’t the Perfection, which is revealed rarely and only in moments of very exceptional Grace, but it is a fraction thereof, and that fraction is always here to feed us if we participate.
It's thus that one needs to learn how to pay quite close and intimate attention to the smallest things around one and the least events which one encounters. It is here that Grace is hidden; and yet, not so hidden after all, if I’m prepared to receive it.
Lee
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