A Qualification

Parenthetically it would be a mistake to believe that as a contemplative you can uncritically be engaged with the world, hoping that in anything, or everything, or certain things God is at work. There is always a risk that even what might pass for reality, along side of convincing ourselves that it is somehow related to God, is nothing more than a retailing of what we want and what we filter out of the soup of daily events. In truth there is so much that can be made to be logical concerning our perceptions, but which amount to no more than the fantasies of intelligent people, even in the church. It is absurd for people who are trying to empty themselves of themselves to be at all agog over material that is no more than the typical cultural garbage that has been a subject of human preoccupation. We need to ask ourselves whether the lively interaction possible with the living God as actually present in the world, and which is genuinely beyond our control, has any genuine relationship with contrived activities which exist largely for general entertainment.