Happiness Is Not A Matter Of Intensity

There Is In Us An Instinct For Newness, For Renewal, For A Liberation Of Creative Power. We Seek To Awaken In Ourselves A Force Which Really Changes Our Lives From Within. And Yet The Same Instinct Tells Us That This Change Is A Recovery Of That Which Is Deepest, Most Original, Most Personal In Ourselves. To Be Born Again Is Not To Become Somebody Else, But To Become Ourselves.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

Stop Thinking And Start Looking.

Grace Is Not A Strange, Magic Substance Which Is Subtly Filtered Into Our Souls To Act As A Kind Of Spiritual Penicillin. Grace Is Unity, Oneness Within Ourselves, Oneness With God.

True Encounter With Christ Liberates Something In Us, A Power We Did Not Know We Had, A Hope, A Capacity For Life, A Resilience, An Ability To Bounce Back When We Thought We Were Completely Defeated, A Capacity To Grow And Change, A Power Of Creative Transformation.