After reading the day's prayers and scripture selections from my small copy of Magnificat magazine the other day, I looked out from my office into the school library and was momentarily stunned by the fact of God's presence. Not that I felt anything directly, but I was struck by the truth that God was there--in that room, that building, at that moment. Through my doorway I saw the beat-up computers and the tiled ceiling strung with orange lights for Halloween. For the moment there were no students, and somehow their absence enhanced my sense of the Presence that filled the room--filled and embraced it at the same time, even though no one was there to be filled and embraced by it. This Presence, I realized, suffuses the room day after day, pouring itself moment by moment into every painted cinder block in the wall, every wooden chair, every book standing on the old shelves, every pixel on every scratched and smudged computer screen. This ordinary room blazes with glory. How veiled our eyes must be not to be blinded in an instant.
About a year ago I was on my way into a church to attend a meeting. As I approached the door I passed a woman sitting on a red, overturned milk crate near the door. She had dark hair, and she was leaning forward, her bottom coming off the crate, her hands reaching just off the edge of the sidewalk and toward the asphalt of the parking lot. She appeared to be slowly falling forward, tumbling off the crate in slow motion. I had stopped to hold the door for a man who was entering the church just behind me, and as I watched, he approached the woman on the crate. "Here's two of them," he said, handing down a carton of Marlboro Light 100s. "Have a good day." I realized then what the man with the Marlboros must have recognized immediately: the woman had no doubt been reaching for a discarded cigarette butt that someone had tossed down on their way into the church. I felt awed by the man's simple act of compassion. Without the slightest trace of judgement or distast
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