God is present to everything like the eye of a camera that sees everything just as it is. Yet we, in our turn, may not be present to God. Like the subjects of a casual photograph, we may not perceive that someone sees a marvelous value and beauty in us and is taking our picture. We are summoned into the presence of God by the fact of our birth, but we become present to God only by our consent. As our faculties and capacities to relate gradually develop and unfold, the capacity to enter into relationship with God increases, and each new depth of presence requires a new consent. Each new awakening to God changes our relationship to ourselves and to everyone and everything else. Growth in faith is growth in the right perception of all reality.

In the beginning, the light of faith may resemble the rays of the sun filtering through a stained-glass window and illuminating the various tints and delicate intricacies of the glass, along with its cracks and flaws. Thus the light of faith filters through our human faculties, manifesting, along with the evidence of human frailty, the beauty and goodness of our personhood.

A higher intensity of faith resembles the rays of the sun pouring through a transparent window, an experience of light that is much more powerful. At times, the glass seems to be transformed into light. Similarly, surrender to the light of faith leads to a more intimate relationship with God--even to a kind of identification that deepens the experience of the divine presence, giving it a wholly new meaning and perspective.

There is a further possibility Suppose that the windowpane is shattered, leaving in place of the glass a great open hole. The light would then no longer be a relationship but an experience of oneness. Divine love, the ripe fruit of faith, gradually changes the perception of ordinary reality into insight and the divine presence into oneness.

Is it the function of those who are ardently seeking God to linger at the moments of insights, or simply to let reality speak for itself and, like the lens of a camera, to open ourselves to the light?

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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