Our days may be dark, but there is no oblivion for God's children

Book 2, Chapter 1 

          -Part 5-

Few things attack the soul more desperately than the fear of obscurity.

If we were to live and die without anyone registering our existence our primary terror would be the obscurity – literally, a life “covered over.”

Obscurity doesn’t come to us in the form of a sterile, solitary life lived in the absence of people. Obscurity thrives when we are among people, surrounded by fellow humans in metropolitan, suburban or rural life. Obscurity comes to us in the form of being lost in a crowd of two or millions.

Obscurity comes to those in declining health or advancing age in the form of being shut away in special institutions or at home separated from the people they still want in their lives.

When I was a teenager, my parents often visited my great-grandmother in a nursing home about 40 miles from our home. The layout of the building was exactly like a hospital – long wide hallways with a series of identical rooms on either side. Each room was divided into two living quarters by a thin cloth that hung from a metallic groove in the ceiling to about three feet above the floor.

It looked and smelled to me like a storage place for people who had outlived their usefulness. Gone were my great-grandmother’s quilting squares, the hundreds of snapshots she kept of the ever-enlarging, always-scattering family, and the stacks of birthday and anniversary cards she had always kept at the ready to send to each of us at the appropriate time.

Instead, she was situated in a room with dark peach tones and green linoleum swirled with white. The term “home” is an attempt to protect the heart from words like “facility” or “cell.” There is, however, no escaping the loss of identity, even with the names hurriedly scribbled and taped under the room numbers.

Worse even than the confined quarters of the residents were the elderly women strapped or tied into wheelchairs creeping along the handrails, begging us to take them home with us.

“Get me out of here!” one woman repeated to everyone who walked past her.

“Please … Hello … Please?” said another.

I heard one of the nurses tell my mother that some of the people there had not had a visitor for several years.

About 30 years after this my mother and I took my father to an Alzheimer’s care unit attached to the hospital where I was born. It was a four-mile drive from the house where my parents spent most of their lives. Dad didn’t know it, but he was being placed in this facility for the rest of his life. We had led him to believe he was in the clinic for tests on a pain in his back.

We escorted Dad to his room that was divided into two living quarters by a thin cloth that hung from a metallic groove in the ceiling to about three feet above the floor. He sat on the bed and said, “I don’t want to stay here.” Who could blame him?

It was then that I realized how small and obscure his life had become. No one ever goes down that hallway unless it is their job, or they are a relative who would feel guilty if they didn’t. This very real and very terrifying form of obscurity is familiar to thousands.

Obscurity comes to those whose families have grown and moved away; whose spouse has died; and whose home has become an empty shell with only loneliness as a decoration.

Obscurity haunts those who feel isolated, no matter how many people are around them or how healthy they are. Any time anyone says, “Nothing I do is appreciated,” they are crying out from a fear of obscurity. Anyone who dreads failing to fulfill what they believe is their purpose in life fears the blight of obscurity.

Psalm 88 is perhaps the most forlorn and suffering psalm in the Bible. Here, twice, the psalmist uses the word translated as “oblivion” by the New Jerusalem Bible, and “the place of forgetfulness” (the place where the dead are forgotten) in the Amplified Bible.

“I am already numbered among those who sink into oblivion,” he says. His thoughts are grave and dark. In fact, he speaks of the grave and of darkness. I know Psalm 88 as the one that ends in a profound whimper: “All that I know is the dark.”

Here is a writer of prayer who is deeply troubled about a life detached from meaning – a life covered over by time with no future trace of itself anywhere, or in anyone.

This basic anxiety is innate. We are created to belong, to be remembered, to live meaningfully. Our human condition may be meager or even awful, but we are never severed from the singular purpose of being beloved of God, and of loving him. It is into this loving embrace that we are invited, and to which our salvation frees us to run. I was first a Christian because I believed. I am now a Christian because I love. This is the quintessential movement out of obscurity and into the light.

God will move mountains to help me believe. He will move them further still to help me love.

No matter his condition or "state of life," the Christian knows he belongs; that God's thoughts toward him are endless; that he is remembered; and that he is loved. Our days may be dark, but there is no oblivion for God's children.

God is precisely present when we are injured

Book 2, Chapter 1 
-Part 4-

As a believer’s faith strengthens, that very faith becomes more and more intuitive.

Caussade uses an interesting word – “instinct” – to describe the person “that sees only the divine life” everywhere in everything. To recognize God’s intentional presence in “labors and mortal dangers,” as he says, allows the faithful person to respond to these situations as to God himself.

Work becomes an aspect of my life with God. So, too, do distressing circumstances that sometimes threaten what is considered a meaningful life. An injury or illness that severely limits one’s abilities or movements – or even confines one to a single room, or a bed, or a wheelchair, or demands continual connection to medical machinery – here God precisely is, exerting his will and accomplishing his work.

As well, he is exactly present when it is not our bodies that fail us, but life. A lost relationship, a broken promise, a betrayal, a job, an education, a missed opportunity, the death of someone beloved – there are thousands of ways that the likes of these can injure us to the depths of our souls; the anguish of which returns often or remains indefinitely. Here, too, God precisely is.

This is impossible to see without faith – and not just faith, but an instinctive, intuitive faith. The Bible may or may not give us a helpful verse at the moment, but a life lived in the presence of God may not require words to know that God has named us “the beloved,” and that He does not stop caring, nor does he love in stops and starts.

Even in our most injurious, devastating times – when we seem to ourselves to be nothing more than the sum total of our weaknesses and failures, or when tragedy strikes with a devastating force – in the recesses of our profound sadness, God precisely abides. The sufferer does not need to articulate the meaning of his suffering. We, I think, waste much effort here. The sufferer need only articulate faith in God and accumulate His love.

“There must be a reason for this,” we might declare. But the reason, like so many things, is hidden in God. So, why set out on an empty exploration seeking the reason for our plight, when we can instead seek all the further our God and what we can know of him?

We cannot both seek attention and seek God

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 3-

There is nothing more deformed or ridiculous than the elitist faithful – those who believe themselves to be special or very, very proficient in spiritual matters.

The Twelve who followed Jesus were at their worst when they were muttering among themselves about which of them was the greatest (Mark 9), or when two of them elbowed others away so their mother could ask Jesus to place them at his right or left in the coming kingdom. We are being unattractively human when we seek attention. It is in our nature to prop ourselves up and lay claim to our own importance. As a race, we are insecure.

An individual or group can consciously or unconsciously take up the attitude that their ways or their particular spiritual bearing brings them closer to God – a higher level, a deeper life, a further knowledge, a brighter lamp, another way, a fuller fullness. Another way that the proud Pharisee may have stated his case in the temple is: “I wish everyone were as close to God as I am.”

Even two of the top leaders in the Old Testament could not avoid a sense of self-importance for which both paid dearly. Moses struck the rock which brought forth water for Israel in the desert. He was not instructed to do this, and for this he was told he would see but not enter the Promised Land with the Israelites. He was told to “speak to the rock.” It is my thought here that Moses temporarily allowed himself to think that he and his staff were the key players in Israel’s deliverance. In that instance Moses forgot himself, and more importantly, he forgot God. (See Numbers 20)

So, too, did King David when he ordered that the number of all valiant men in all Israel be registered. For this, David was given the choice of three terrible options to befall his kingdom – famine, pestilence or his kingdom beset upon by other nations. The spirit behind this army census was, apparently, David’s desire to see just how big he had made things and to bask a bit in his warring skills. (See 2 Samuel 24)

It might be easy to see these as minor slip ups, and to criticize God for being heavy-handed in both cases. It may help us to understand that once God delivers a nation or sets up a people with a king and enlarges them with his goodness, he will not tolerate anyone sharing glory that belongs to him alone.

No person is that elite. Early spiritual teachers, such as Abbott John of the Ladder (7^th Century) warned against “the vanity that follows obedience.” (From “The Ladder of Divine Ascent.”) Christian spirituality makes a horrible, horrible camouflage for self-promotion. This, of course, won’t keep us from trying.

During his ministry, Jesus confronted the deeds of the scribes and Pharisees with these words: “Everything they do is done to attract attention…” (Matthew 23:5) Who among us can escape this indictment? Our proneness to self-absorption will always betray us by revealing our unique deformity and our special ridiculous ways. The worst kind of elitism is the spiritual kind. There is nothing uglier than a smug, tidy believer. Jesus warned against this and advised his disciples to not show it when they were fasting. Knowing that every single one of us would want to have the “who-is-the-greatest” conversation, Jesus counseled us to pray unannounced, to fast privately, to give due credit to others and take none for ourselves, and to provide financial support quietly. (Matthew 6:1-18.)

He bore his own majestic nature in such a way that few recognized his divine regal stature. He did not seek attention as a king. He sought to save the lost (Luke 19:10). He is the Prophet, Priest and King, yet his words were ignored, his role among the Jews reduced to that of a criminal, and those who by rights should have bent their knees in servitude instead stood straight-legged to condemn Jesus to a cruel and pathetic death.

Even though the mob did the yelling, they were incited by elitists – Pharisees and Sadducees who were afraid of the loss of their privileged position if Christ and his followers unsettled the quiet of Rome’s little district at the eastern meniscus of the Mediterranean Sea (John 11:48).

Elitism is something the good mystical writers avoid. It appears that Caussade, at this point in his writing, felt a need to return to the idea that the great boon that self-abandonment can be to a believer is not limited to special Christians.

In the last two paragraphs of this section Caussade repeats the word “all” twelve times, counting only the times it is used in the sense of “everyone.”

Each one of us, he explains, experiences a different blending of the cardinal virtues: Faith, Hope and Love.

_{“and In as much as God can blend them with infinite variety there is no soul that does not receive his touch with personal individualizing characteristics. But what matter? the ingredients are always faith, hope and charity.” (Page 46)}

When Jesus is in the house the dishes can wait

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 2-

When the believer recognizes the presence of God, either in a moment of contemplation or in a particular moment of spiritual clarity, (or, indeed, as a lifestyle) everything else will appear to be comparatively spurious.

Caussade makes an impressive list of things that are quite important in the life of the disciple, but is ever insistent that these things matter little when a person knows he is living at hand to God. In other words, as pointed out with Martha and Mary, when Jesus is in the house, the dishes can wait.

The important things to a disciple include good works, methods of prayer, treasured devotional practices, helpful spiritual books, and the guidance mustered from a spiritual director. You would think any or all of these would be difficult to “leave on one side,” as Caussade says. Perhaps this is because we have so little actual contact with God through his divine action that we settle for these means to him, and content ourselves with these half-measures without acquiring the end to which the devices proceed.

We may have lulled ourselves into believing that true contact with God is rarely possible, or that it is really not good for us – being this subjective and all – and so we have a relationship with the book of paper and ink, but possess a poorly-developed personal bond with God that we were created to experience and express. We know of people who have abused the idea of “direction from God,” and we have seen these incidents classed as weirdness, heresy and even mental illness. Just because there is a faulty imitation is not reason enough to reject the genuine movement of God over or within the life of a disciple.

It seems that we would expect a person living this bond with God to be what we would call a solid believer, fixed to the foundation of the faith, unshakeable and unyielding – a living monument to discipleship. It is therefore a little unexpected to have the good father compare such a person to … wind. And not even strong wind at that:

_{“These souls are something like the movements of the air.” (Page 44)}

Those with this developed inner disposition and awareness of their bond with God will be pushed here and there by the very breath of God. Their movements may not make sense to anyone else, or even to the followers themselves.

Jesus told Nicodemus that anyone born of the Spirit would be wind-like: “Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7-8)

“These souls are something like the movements of the air.”

We have had to find different ways to move like the wind since Jesus (and here Caussade) made it clear that we ought to be unconditionally responsive to the movement of God upon us. Our lifestyle has pinned many of us to mortgages, bills, careers and responsibilities that keep us from the kind of impulsive following that the Twelve managed to enact after Jesus said, “Follow me.”

Father Caussade’s immediate audience was a group of nuns living a cloistered life, which involved a structure that would have set limits on the movements of the women. They would need permission to do something they felt God wanted them to do, and they would be asked by their superiors to do things that would be difficult or tedious for them, or seem to be the farthest thing from spiritual activity. (My own spiritual director, a Cisterician monk, spent years of his life dusting at the abbey where he lives and prays.)

Some among us in the laity are simply unable to move freely due to maladies that require staying at home, or limit our travel.

Is true discipleship a lost reality in such lives, or can God’s will and divine action take place within the confines of our “state of life”? Can the bedridden or the financially strapped or the poor or those with no authority over their own movements or the imprisoned be moved upon by the will of God, or are they excluded from the work of God?

Two things are clear here that are often difficult to bring together. 1.) God expects unconditional response to him on our part. 2.) God will work within the limitations of our state of life to accomplish his will. These two truths have to be believed as an inseparable pair and they coexist in each of us only inasmuch as we carry them wisely together. The Bible and the corpus of Christian spiritual teaching throughout history suggest that the time and place for spiritual life to reach its apex is now and here!

The demand for an explanation and careful planning, while wise in its proper use, is a means to kill the wind-like spirit of one who wishes to respond to God unconditionally. Abram’s response to God’s call to leave Ur is apt to make many of us uncomfortable: “Yahweh said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your kindred and your father’s house for a country which I shall show you …’” (Genesis 12:1) God was no more specific than this at the time.

The call to leave what we know and go where we do not know is a very fearful enterprise for anyone, unless we have faith in God leading us. Abram’s move into the unknown is mentioned in the “faith” chapter of Hebrews 11: “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance given to him and his descendants, and he set out without knowing where he was going.” (v. 8)

Either Abram or any of the Twelve disciples might have asked where God was taking them, or how long they would be away from their normal duties, or what their responsibilities would be during the journey and at its end. Or they might have even asked what was in it for them. "Jesus, can I please see your five-year plan?" Still, at the risk of being considered flighty or irresponsible, they kept their hope fixed upon God.

Where better to be than with God, even if the demands of journeying with him could lead to suffering and death? Beneath these demands the Christian perceives the unseen life that is given by God. We are aware that we are led and loved by the Lord. Every step we take must enhance this awareness.

Spiritual exercises without faith are worthless

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 1-

Father Caussade has been putting into words some of the subtleties of the Christian’s spiritual life. I think it is natural to be a little uncomfortable or suspicious when he makes unfamiliar delineations. Objectifying the movements of the Spirit of God within one’s life is an onerous task. To some extent he is trying to map unexplored territory.

Such is the case here, where Father C discusses two phases of a believer’s spirituality:

_{“there is a time when the soul lives in god and a time when god lives in the soul.” (Page 42)}

Language fails us a little bit here. Further, longer reflection on this opening section of Book 2 will affirm the primary point, which is that what he calls God living in the soul is a more excellent way, and that self-abandonment is crucial to this second, superior spiritual position.

We can understand, I think, that Father C prefers the second phase over the first. If, however, we believe the good father is dismissing or discarding the first as unimportant, we are pushing his meaning too far. Phase one is a needed stepping stone – one beyond which the believer should, but might not, pass.

Here it is important to remember that his immediate audience is the Nuns of the Visitation. Their days and their spiritual disciplines were strictly regimented. When Caussade decries these very legitimate disciplines and structures, he does so with the same offense many of us take whenever we believe ritual and props have taken the place of the very spiritual life they were meant to engage and enhance.

Spiritual disciplines or exercises as an end in themselves merely provide a person a regulated religion. They are intended to be a means to the weightier, most excellent way of knowing God. The warning embedded in Caussade’s guidance here is similar to the one that Jesus presented to the Pharisees. Caussade says:

_{“when the soul lives in god it takes trouble regularly to furnish itself with all the means it can think of in order to attain to union with him. all its paths are marked out, its reading, its examination of conscience; its guide is ever at its side – everything is regulated, even its times for talking.” (Page 42)}

Jesus spoke against the Pharisees because their regulations were lifeless, out of balance and did not bring them closer to God. For example: “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay your tithe of mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law – justice, mercy, good faith! These you should have practiced, those not neglected. You blind guides straining out gnats and swallowing camels” (Matthew 23:23, 24).

Notice here that Jesus neither discards the Law, nor dismisses the detail to which the Pharisees attempted to follow it. Rather, he finds the Pharisees guilty of neglecting the weightier things.

Keenly aware of the bells, the schedules and the rigors of monastic life, Caussade is willing to state that these lighter things fade away when one becomes aware that God lives in the soul. Religious rigors can become just so much potty training after one discovers in his soul the reality of God living there.

In our experience we may have seen a church filled with sincere people who attend services regularly and try to be good neighbors, but their religion does not take them to Jesus the Savior through whom we enter into this abiding relationship with God. They are trying to behave, but they have omitted the faith as it was handed down to us.

Kierkegaard said, "Faith, beckoning, offers to be man's companion on life's way, but turns to stone the impudent who turn about impudently to grasp it." (Works of Love, Page 27)

Just two quick examples here: When in college, my friend Randy Raver and I spoke with a woman who had gone to church all of her life and considered herself a religious person, a Christian. She did not, however, believe that Jesus rose from the grave. This left quite a hole in her creed.

Years later, as a pastor of a small church, I was on one occasion gently challenged by a man in our church who commented, in amazement, “You seem to actually believe what you are saying.” His creed, too, was tattered.

A structure to support the forces of the life within is what Caussade is going for here. This is why he makes the beautiful comparison of God living in the soul as being like the healing work of Christ when the woman touched the hem of his garment (Mark 5:25ff). The movements of the spirit of such a one are hidden and do not take on the appearances of greatness. Still, they have an immeasurable impact.

God had a beautiful idea -- You!

Book 1, Chapter 2

-Part 12-

God created each of us. We can, of course, explain our existence in reproductive terms, which are miraculous in their own way. Christian theism does not limit itself to a natural explanation of our existence. Deeper truths are in place to state mankind’s place in the universe. We are created in the image of God. We are known in God’s mind before we are formed in the womb. We are individually indwelt by the Holy Spirit to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.

That is to say, God’s will includes who he wants us to be and what he wants us to do from moment to moment. His vision of us was formed in love before we were born, and includes how we will grow spiritually in this life, and what we will be like after our resurrection.

There are several thoughts coming together in this section to describe the formation of the Christian.

God’s idea or final design of each of us is an exemplar, archetype or model which we are being turned into as we move through our lives. We start out redeemable and transformable, and are not left without the Holy Spirit always drawing us toward the completeness found in redemption and transformation.

The psalmist refers to this marvelous close watch over which the Holy Spirit keeps us as God’s presence everywhere and God’s thoughts endlessly toward us. This rendering of Psalm 139 is but one example: “You created my inmost self, knit me together in my mother’s womb. For so many marvels I thank you; a wonder am I, and all your works are wonders. You knew me through and through, my being held no secrets from you, when I was being formed in secret, textured in the depths of the earth.” (vv. 13-15)

The Christian experiences this close watch by being continually pressed into conformity to God’s perfect and unique idea of him or her. There is an eternal, glorified completeness that awaits us after the resurrection – after which learning and growth will continue – and there is a more immediate “shape” that we should take in this and the next moment. This is known to God, and he uses all of his formative powers to work his further marvels upon us to better fit us for Christ-likeness now and for life in eternity.

Redemption and transformation are not only treasures that we will one day open, but they influence what we will say next, what we will do next, and the next step we will take today. These benefits and their influences are present in every moment, along with God’s perfect idea of our being and our response in that moment. Thus, each moment is sacred. Each is linked to the eternal wisdom of God as a means by which we are united with God and become more like him in character. The Orthodox Church calls this process “theosis.”

When we talk about conformity we have to be clear that we are talking about a personal acquiescence to God’s design for each of us as individuals. We are each to expect transformation into the image of Christ, but Christ will be expressed differently in each of us because each person is one of a kind.

John Paul II made this abundantly clear in his book, The Theology of the Body, in which he stated: “The person is unique and unrepeatable, someone chosen by Eternal Love.” (Page 65) We are each like a gemstone different from all others through which the same light passes, but uniquely so.

At the same time, the light that passes through us also changes us in ways that are mostly beyond us. We are very childish in our thinking if we believe we know everything that God is doing in us – in the inmost self that he created – or that we know what his completed idea of us is.

God continues his marvelous work upon us through his word as we have it in the Scriptures, and also through that particular presence of the Holy Spirit that the believer has been given.

We are, in a word, God’s artistry. “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which God has already designed to make up our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10).

The word for workmanship is the Greek word poiema, which is the origin of the word “poem” (and the Latin poema). So work of art is no great stretch of the language, or an attempt to be romantic or overly ornate with the text, but is in fact most accurate.

What stops us from experiencing these truths to the depths of our being from moment to moment in our lives is a failure to yield – the lack of self-abandonment. The canvas, the stone, the liquid metal in a mould must give way to the artist, and do nothing to stay or interfere with his hand. We must be pliable in God’s capable hands.

Always concerned that we leave God in a book or in the appendix of world history, Caussade warns us to prefer God’s action upon us, and to hold steady for it:

_{“we admire and glorify god’s action in the books which describe his works, and when he is ready to continue them by writing them in our hearts we cannot keep the paper still on which he is to write, and we prevent his action by being curious to see what he is doing in us and in others.” (Page 40)}

Our life, says Cassaude, is “divine substance” (page 40), and it is left unmarked or unfinished due to our neglect when we seek God in history instead of God in our fidelity to him in the moment. Catholic doctrine would tell us that we are failing to cooperate with the grace of God.

The material in this section could lead to pages and pages of response and reflection. Suffice it to say that Caussade sums his first book (there is a Book 2 to follow) in the last five words of this English translation, which is a banner under which all of us should want to pitch the tent of our little life of faith: “TO ALLOW THEE TO ACT.”

(In memory of my beloved son-in-law Jesse Salveson, 1987-2011, a true work of art and a gift to us from God.)

We see divine action when we look at things sufficiently

Book 1, Chapter 2

-Part 11-

Continued some more …

Whether by agitation, misfortune or our own foolishness, we can happen upon a difficult life. Whether they are life-threatening or merely bothersome, difficulties arrive unwelcome at our door and force their way easily in. We can blame it on the breakage around us, the breakage within us, or even piously claim it as the will of God, but harsh things happen to us or to those whom we love and we are darkened by them.

We are darkened by them unless we are content.

Two Pauline statements come to mind: “I have learned to manage with whatever I have,” or “to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” (Philippians 4:11) And, “We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in accordance with his purpose, and turns everything to their good.” (Romans 8:28)

While I believe these words with all my heart, I still prefer non-difficult days. I have a very natural rating system that considers hard, miserable times as bad; and happy, carefree times as good. On a scale of 1-10, I like everything from 6.5 up, and I do not like anything 4 or lower. I can quote the above believed verses until the cows come home, but I cannot help myself. I prefer ease.

On this score Caussade says he doesn’t pay any mind to whether God’s will – his divine action – comes to him in the form of storm or calm:

_{“Thy action is suficient for me; in whatever manner it causes me to live and die I am content. It pleases me for its own sake apart from the means it employs and the effects it produces.” (Page 36)}

Only an abject trust in God can lead a man to make such statements about the things that might happen to him in life and to see that the true gift through all the occurrences in his life is that God has been active in and around him. This trust can be discovered in the life of the Christian with two tools common to all believers: A developed life of prayer, and being personally, actively involved in divine action.

The means by which God’s divine action enters the life of the believer can be devastating, radical, hideous. The observed effects of this action in such a life could be minimal, obscure or completely invisible. If we are honest, we will admit that we want God’s action in our lives to come to us only through means that are comfortable and fun. Further, we will want whatever God does with our life to be meaningful if not earth-shattering.

It was Thoreau who said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Many of those quietly desperate people are Christians who fail to see that God is active in and around them – or they have failed to respond to his activity. The whole of Caussade’s involvement in divine action is in seeing and responding. Failure to see or to respond breaks down our involvement in divine action. We know ourselves to be ordinary and unnoticed. This, we believe, takes us out of the running for God to do anything of significance with us. Like Elisha’s servant at Dothan, we are not seeing the vast spiritual activity that is going on right before us. (See 2 Kings 6:15-17, where the servant is permitted to see “the mountain filled with horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” to ensure the defeat of a great Syrian army amassed around the city to seize the prophet and end the divine aid to Israel through him.)

The key to this perception – this way of seeing – according to our guide, and made apparent by the Elisha story, is to “look at things sufficiently”:

_{“we do not look at things sufficiently in that supernatural mode of being which divine action gives them.” (Page 36)}

The key to responding faithfully, Caussade says, is to possess and be at home in the “land of the spirit,” and to approach the divine action of God …

_{“… in order to be the simple subjects of its operation.” (Page 39)}

It is a lifetime of work, but the spiritual life that is indeed attached to the will of God moment by moment is the one that sees and responds.