Being connected to others who long to live from their own Inner Light fosters wholeness and creates communities of people who seek to invite others into this life-giving wholeness.

These are the three pathways that Christians walk, not to fulfill mere duty or to perpetuate some outdated ritualism, but to embrace their life-giving possibilities for us and for all. Together, Christians are called to this reconciling life, reminded daily, weekly, and yearly of the Story in which it all coheres and the person around whom it’s cen

And this is why absolution — the assurance of pardon — follows. It names God’s commitment to us, extending grace even amid our self-sabotage. Grace is God’s response. God moves toward us, not away from us. God offers compassion, not judgment.

Confession is our opportunity to identify obstacles to union. In solidarity with others, we are able to name our false selves individually or together, and reconnect to our big-D Desire for God. Confession paves the way to wholeness, to wholeheartedness.

Be still, and know that I am God. Practicing the presence of God is, indeed, a practice, but it is a graced practice. If you long for it, your intentions will meet the astounding grace of a God who is presently drawing you into communion. You will notice your obstacles. But you’ll also notice hints of the transcendent.

Her greatest work, The Interior Castle, details a journey from fragmentation to wholeness in a process she calls recollection.4 Drawing from the writings of another Spanish mystic, Francisco de Osuna, she employs an idea that has extraordinary psychological relevance today: the idea that we, quite literally, need to be re-collected.

The liturgy offers us the beat, gets us back in tune with the cosmic harmony, takes us out of our old, life-leeching patterns just long enough to allow us to hear the whisper of God saying, “Where are you? Come home to me.”

What we’re after is union and communion — truly “being the church” together. And our own Inner Light brightens in the company of other lights, in a community of women and men who participate in the Great Story together.

I realized that we can dupe ourselves into believing that wholeness can be achieved only through some sort of monastic or ascetic existence, where we sit perpetually in the yoga position minding our being with utter attentiveness. But this isn’t real life. It’s true that our wholeness is cultivated in quiet and mindful times, but it’s also cultivat