Let me state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life. That’s opposed to God holding out for the pure, the spiritual, the right idea or the ideal anything. This is why Jesus turns religion on its head! (p. 12)
• Recall a moment when you suddenly felt a sense of God’s presence, or the holy, in an everyday moment. Allow yourself to remember as much as you can of where you were and what you saw, heard, smelled, possibly tasted, and touched.
• Can you articulate what “shifted” or “opened” in you to notice the manifestation of God or the holy? (page 14) It is not that if I am moral, then I will be loved by God, but rather that I must first come to experience God’s love, and then I will—almost naturally— be moral. (p. 28)
• What is your spontaneous, gut-level response to these words? Does this seem too easy, or too hard? Too unbelievable, or too ordinary?
• What, if anything, holds you back from believing in God’s love?
• Speak this quotation out loud several times, listening to the words as you speak them. What do you notice?
—from the book Things Hidden Companion Guide by Richard Rohr (page 23)
