Close Enough to Touch

​“God is closer to us than our own soul.”
Julian of Norwich

Sunday morning I went to Krispy Kreme at first light, soon after it opened, and I was the only customer. It was quiet; none of the donut making machines were running. I was lost in my dull early morning thoughts while I waited at the cash register for my donuts, when a young man behind the donut display case who I had not noticed spoke to me and said, "Aren't you the guy who does the centering prayer at church?" I looked at him, taken by surprise. I didn't recognize him and hesitated, not knowing how he knew me.  He said, "I was there a few weeks ago at Bright Bridge." I asked him his name and when he said it, I remembered him. 
 
He smiled as he handed me a glazed donut and said "Here, this is for you." He must have already picked it out of the display case, because it seemed to appear out of nowhere. I took it and thanked him for it and for speaking out when he recognized me and asking if I was who he thought I was.  
 
When this young man spoke to me, I was drawn out of my human focus and into a divine space. His words and his act had divine power. 
 
We are both human and divine. We live out of the human side of the equation most of the time and can be oblivious to the divine side of our essence. Our transformation in Christ is about realizing our divinity and its intermingling with our humanity. 
 
We can read scripture or pray and not see God's presence in our lives. It's not always cause and effect, or action and reward, but it is through our contemplative practices that we can come to realize more and more who we truly are in and with God. God is always present, always near, always within our reach, always at hand. Practicing Centering Prayer helps us to strengthen our connection to God, our relationship with God.
 
When Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is "near" (or "at hand"), he wasn't saying that it's coming if we just hold on and wait. His point was "Everything that is God, with God, and in God is already here. It is a present reality, close enough to touch -- if only we are aware of it and reach for it and embrace it." 
 
Jesus was telling all those who would listen, "I'm here in the flesh to show you that God is always in your presence. See me? I'm the incarnation of God." Jesus introduced the Lord's Supper as a sacramental practice of recognizing God's presence within us and communing with God. Taking the bread and the wine into our own bodies is an intentional and sacred act of incorporating Christ's vital being into ours, and a remembrance that he is part of us and we are part of him. Together with Christ and with each other we are a whole.
 
It helps our understanding if we consider the meaning of the word "remembered." To be 're-membered" literally means "to be put back together again," or "to be reconnected, to be made whole." So in the communion liturgy, Jesus's words, "Do this in remembrance of me," emphasizes that the act of eating the bread and drinking the wine is to make us all one in him, to reconnect us to the Whole.
 
When we participate in Holy Communion we are entering into the Trinitarian flow of love. We are experiencing our divinity and we are recognizing what Jesus was telling us: God and His whole kingdom are at hand, literally in your hand as you receive the elements and ingest them. God is not outside waiting; He's inside you; you've consumed Him, He's at the core of you. You are an expression or manifestation of God in the world. 
 
That morning when I walked out of the donut store into the parking lot, I was smiling. The sun was rising, and I knew that the Kingdom of Heaven was near. I had touched it. Not through my own action but by God's hand. It was by a gift, something I didn't ask for or deserve or expect, but it made me aware of God's presence in the world. On this Sabbath morning, the donut I received as a gift was a simple earthly representation of the divine gift of God's presence, just as the broken bread is a representation of the gift of Christ's body given to us and for us. 
 
Centering Prayer awakens us to the presence of God, to His Kingdom that is here and now. Centering Prayer brings us into an awareness of the Presence of the Divine within our reach. The more we practice the prayer, the more our fingertips touch the divine and feel it and know that it exists, here and now, and the greater our confidence and assurance that God is at work on earth as He is in heaven.