“I feel God all around me.” These words, spoken by my six-year-old daughter as she drifted to sleep, resonated deeply. More often, bedtime pronouncements are demands for another sip of water or ingenious stalling tactics. Theological insights are rarely on the nightly agenda.
Yet, hearing her declaration, “I feel God all around me,” leaves only two paths forward. Dismiss it as the fanciful musings of an overtired child, moments after a pajama-related meltdown, or accept it at face value. Perhaps she can feel God’s presence everywhere. Why shouldn’t she?
Our modern world often leans towards cynicism and disillusionment. Sadly, the church hasn’t always countered this wave with equal parts mysticism and joy, sometimes mirroring the very skepticism it should be challenging. We offer practical advice and a listening ear – services often better provided by trained counselors – when what many truly crave is permission to connect with the divine. They need reassurance that feeling God’s presence isn’t foolishness, but a genuine experience. Because, indeed, God is all around them.
Each week in the Rite I Liturgy, we express gratitude for being made members of Christ’s mystical body. We ask to dwell in Him and for Him to dwell in us. Then, we step out of the church and often forget that this mystical body of Jesus is with us, within us, even as we sit in a mundane setting, perhaps at a casual diner.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers recounts Abba Lot questioning Abba Joseph about his spiritual progress. Similar to the rich young ruler, Abba Lot lists his dutiful practices: “I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Abba Joseph’s profound reply, a testament to pastoral wisdom, was to stand, extend his hands – now ablaze with fire – and declare, “If you are willing, you can become all flame.”
These disciplines – honed over years of spiritual practice, liturgical participation, and dedicated prayer – aren’t about mere moral improvement. They are about transformation, about becoming more like God, embodying the mystical body of Christ, partaking in the Divine Nature, and nurturing an insatiable longing for God that grows with each encounter.
We are constantly battling the encroachment of secularity. The daily grind leaves little room to perceive God’s omnipresence. Yet, we can actively reclaim those moments. Recently, I’ve cultivated a practice of “recovering moments” throughout my day. I link everyday sounds and sights to prayer, creating triggers that prompt a Pavlovian lifting of the heart.
The microwave beeping becomes a signal for the Jesus Prayer. My phone buzzing – that potential kryptonite for the soul – prompts another prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And seeing a green car while driving brings a smile, a quiet reminder of God’s love, even after moments of road rage. Like a cock crowing, it recalls my failings and welcomes me back to grace.
Green Cars have become a personal, almost humorous, dialogue with God. Since assigning prayer to their appearance, they seem to materialize most often when my spirituality feels weakest, when my actions are far from holy. Recovering these moments, sharing these small inside jokes with the Creator, builds habits of holy thought.
Even in traffic, I can retreat to an inner sanctuary, a secret space within my heart to connect with the divine. Repeating a breath prayer quiets my spirit, preparing me for deeper communion. Brother Lawrence’s classic The Practice of the Presence of God emphasizes this very act: noticing the Holy One. Thinking of God as much as possible. Reclaiming mundane events from the secular creep, turning dishwashing into washing dishes with Jesus.
The doing – the physical action – remains the same. But the being – the state of mind – transforms. Everyday activities become infused with the awareness of God. It’s not about injecting the miraculous into the mundane, but realizing that no action is truly mundane when seen in the light of the divine. It’s recognizing those moments when you feel God all around you and nurturing that spiritual fire. Prayer is experiential, and repeated experience reshapes our minds, transforming us from within. Teaching this type of prayer is teaching experience, training people to see the divine interwoven with the human everywhere they look.
On August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration, we pray, “grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty,” and we don’t append “one glad morning when this life is over.” We ask to behold the King’s beauty here and now. We find deliverance from worldly anxieties within ourselves, in our “interior chapel,” as Brother Lawrence called it.
We must affirm people when they share experiences of hearing, feeling, or encountering God. Of course, they have! These experiences are to be expected, welcomed. We need to believe in the immanence of joy, the thin veil separating this world from Heaven. Spiritual experience isn’t just part of the Christian life; it is the very essence of it.
We aren’t inviting people to weekly therapy, intellectual debates, or moralistic plays. We are inviting them to profound transformation, to be undone and remade. We are inviting them to feel God all around them. To live lives brimming with purpose, even in the seemingly ordinary. Even stuck in a pharmacy line, we might just notice a green car, a gentle nudge towards the ever-present divine.
