God can most easily be lost by being thought found.

Francis's all-night prayer, "Who are you, O God, and who am I?" is probably a perfect prayer, because it is the most honest prayer we can offer.

It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, and personally find it again--but now on a new level.

In the end, we do not so much reclaim what we have lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process. Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan and find it insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream.

For the man on the quest, the universe becomes enchanting-an effect that good religion accomplishes. There are no dead ends, no wasted time, no useless characters or meaningless happenings. All has meaning, and God is in all things waiting to speak and to bless. Everything belongs once a man is on his real quest and asking the right questions.

To have a spiritual life is to recognize early on that there is always a similarity and coherence between the seer and the seen, the seekers and what they are capable of finding. You will seek only what you have partially already discovered and seen within yourself as desirable. Spiritual cognition is invariably re-cognition.

God comes to you disguised as your life," as my friend Paula D'Arcy so wisely says.

reality itself, our reality, my limited and sometimes misinterpreted experience, still becomes the revelatory place for God.

We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, whether we know it or not. This journey is a spiral and never a straight line. We are created with an inner restlessness and call that urges us on to the risks and promises of a second half to our life. There is a God-size hole in all of us, waiting to be filled. God creates the very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy.

You are as close to God as you choose to be.

This is what God wants most from you: a relationship!

POINT TO PONDER: I'm as close to God as I choose to be.