Augustine of Hippo got it. The glue is grace, His not ours.

I figure that God’s presence isn’t dependent on my perception. It doesn’t matter what I’m feeling or observing, whether I’m thinking deep or shallow thoughts, or being emotional or rational.
God is. Period.
And, Psalm 139 suggests that God is present without regard for my ability to feel connected or spiritual.

I just remembered a wonderful chapter in Roberta Bondi’s Memories of God. The chapter, I think, was titled “The Green Tiled Floor” and it’s about a day when she realized she’d lost the crucifixion.

I agree with the other comments about how God is always near, but I know what you mean about how much in stinks to realize you’ve been ignoring him. ARGH.

OK, Doug, now I gotta go find the book.

I hope you don’t mind the participation of an agnostic in these conversations. (I think there’s at least some overlap between what you and your readers call God, and what I think of as “truth.”)
Sometimes I feel truth all around me and inside of me, and in those moments I can’t imagine how I would ever forget. But then (inevitably, so far) I do forget, and the results are not good: malaise, bitterness, anxiety. Duct tape for my personal truths about how to live would certainly be useful. Hmmm…if only there were a book.
The Buddha Diaries

What I have discovered, the beauty of who we are is based solely on the premise “What we will we do! What we wish we won’t!” The connection we have with Life is permanent. What we will do with that life with which we are gifted is what we do. If we prefer to consider what is real to be unreal….Love for instance….we will do everything in our power to create a love that is an illusion, unreal, a lie; fashioning a relationship with a significant other based on the pain and suffering of our past. And, we will call this “as happy as we will ever be.” BUT, if we prefer to remain in the present, surrounded by the Love that is our make up, we yearn to expand with its need to learn more of what it is capable…We discover how it is we ARE success, we ARE happiness, we ARE great…24/7/365. Tiger Woods is the perfect example of such a presence of living Life; with little need for distraction and absolute craving for purpose and meaning.
http://www.booklocker.com/books/2980.html

I just want some hummus and crackers.

Is Karl Rove now sticking to God, or vice versa? Was this faked for political reasons?
I clipped this from his retirement speech at the Whitehouse:”At month’s end, I will join those whom you meet in your travels, the ordinary Americans who tell you they are praying for you. Like them, I will ask for God’s continued gifts of strength and wisdom for you and your work, your vital work for our country and the world, and for the Almighty’s continued blessing of our great country.
Thank you again for this extraordinary opportunity. (Applause.)

Thought so, Thinker. You’ll thank me, too.

It is a difficult thing to cross from one life, lived in place outside prayer, to the life lived by and within it.
In Quaker speech there is a term “prayerful” which perhaps (along with the word integrity) epitomizes the entire ethos, theology, and the mode of Quaker survival and achievement in the world. In Quaker business, to “prayerfully consider” something is the most serious form of deliberation- it is a request, and spiritual demand, to align the matter at hand with one’s whole relationship with God in all integrity that can be mustered. In older Christian literature there is the occasional mention of individual persons ‘of much prayer’, which is viewed as exceptional accomplishment and almost irresistable in its ability to persuade those in good faith and endure worldly opposition and offense without anger.
At times, when I feel unable to reach that inner place in which prayer is completely genuine, freed of worldly dross, when I feel blind to its perspective and overrun by worldy and selfish concerns, I find a quiet place and read a little in some book or certain kinds of music. Julian of Norwich’s “Revelations of Divine Love” is a marvel, sometimes the Bookmark of Teresa of Avila is quite enough. (‘La pacienza todo lo alcanza’.) The great mystics are the experts and great teachers of prayer; it is their art and science, after all, and one should learn from the best.
There is an wonderful Jewish literature on the tension/conflict between prayer and worldly living. It’s formulated as a polarity of ‘keva’ (discipline, i.e. mandatory regular ritual) and ‘kavanah’ (intention, i.e. ability to bring passion and attention into prayer). I recommend Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “God In Search of Man” as one of the great religious texts in this and many other regards. (Don’t worry about your Christian convictions being offended, affected, or contradicted, and there is much you will learn about Jewish religious passion and commitment to Judaism. Pope John XXIII read the book and loved it, telling Heschel to write more books of that quality at the audience Heschel was given in the Vatican.)
Heschel’s shorter meditation “The Sabbath” is more explicitly about prayer and greatly treasured as well.