Can we say it is God’s home? I prefer to perceive it “through a glass darkly” as what I might call God’s holiest of holies. What is my connection, if any, to heaven? I’ve seen glimpses of it only by eyes of faith. I’ve felt the presence—never in a merely logical way—in thin places
An African woman perceives and accepts Christ as a woman and as an African. The commitment that flows from this faith is commitment to full womanhood (humanity), to the survival of human communities, to the ‘birthing’, nurturing, and maintenance of life, and to loving
One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the
The cell was a sacred space, a place in which a woman could be with herself and the divine Presence and listen. The cell was a place of divine encounter and of ongoing, daily experience of being immersed in God’s presence.
God is the goodness that cannot be angry, for He is nothing but goodness.
Our soul is one-ed to Him, who is unchangeable goodness,
and between God and our soul is neither anger nor forgiveness, as He sees it.
My adventure into fullness of life (which I take to be the kingdom of heaven) involves reading, writing, and great conversation—preferably over a good meal. It is nourished by the arts, especially music. But there is a paradox here, one that the mystics might understand.
Christians inherit two basic views of heaven. The popular Western version tends to be of the static angels-and-harps variety. I prefer the Eastern version. It has more of the flavor of dynamic continuity. We move “from glory to glory” right now, not simply after we’re dead.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe;
you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies;
you right hand shall save me.
I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation.
Not long before the day on which she was to leave this life—you knew which day it was to be, O Lord, though we did not—my mother and I were alone, leaning from a window which overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house where we were staying at Ostia.