"Although what I am saying about living in God is true and it's not the first time we've heard it, we either don't pay any attention to it or we simply don't want to understand it. If we really understood that we are living inside our Beloved, I don't think we could possibly be so presumptuous about many things.
"Let's visualize God for a moment as being like a vast and exquisite dwelling. Let's call it a palace. This palace is God Himself. Now, can a wicked person get away from this place to commit wicked deeds? No of course not! The nasty acts take place within the palace itself, that is within God Himself. Oh terrifying thought! But a thought worthy of reflection. It would be very helpful for those of us who are ignorant of these truths to understand them. If we truly realized that our negative behaviors defile God's sacred space, we could not possibly act with such audacity."
No wonder the psalmist says "Where can I run from Your love?" Everywhere we go, God is there, waiting to love us: God is inside us and also God surrounds us. While Teresa thinks of God as being like a vast and exquisite dwelling such as a palace, I think of God as an infant's first dwelling place, a vast and exquisite Womb. Everyone and everything has been conceived by God's holiness and is warmed, enriched, empowered to grow, and sustained by living within and being nourished by God's loving and fertile Womb.
Once we realize that we are infants dependent upon God for survival, and that God loves us and feeds us so that we grow inside Her, how sad it is when we reject the One Who carries us. How sad when we defile our own Home with selfish outbursts and petty, hurtful conniving! When we feel proud and think we can "go it alone," all we have to do to become humble is to realize that we are helpless infants who survive on an umbilical cord flowing with grace.
How tragic then to think that the two deadly shooters in Orlando this past week committed their acts of murder in the Presence of God and defiled God's sacred space. They were God's own sons who lived in God's Womb, yet they willfully severed the umbilical cords that connected them to God so they could no longer be fed by their Heavenly Mother's love. How God must have wept to see and experience these children's souls shriveling within Her! As Teresa wisely points out, Satan is very quick to ask to be invited into someone's mentally ill mind if the person has become a hater, so Satan can use these irrational hatreds to further his twisted agenda. I pray that somehow, in the moments of their deaths, they rediscovered the One Who longed to hold them safe.
How blessed to know that we and everyone we love are sustained and connected by living together in God's holy Womb. No matter how far our loved ones are from us geographically, they are very near to us spiritually, and even nearer to God, sheltered and protected by the Sacred Walls of God's holy Womb so that the Evil One cannot come near.
But God counts on our prayers to aid Him in reinforcing the strength of those Sacred Walls. The more we rely on God's protection and nourishment, the more sincere and sustained our prayers will be. Our prayers are like fingers stretching out to touch those Sacred Walls with loving attention and praise, to touch every other child curled up inside and nestled beside us with loving intercession. Our prayers, fondling those Walls, hear God's vast heartbeat and we know that we are alive in the midst of All Life.
Our lives sometimes seem to be lived in darkness. We don't know what triumph or tragedy lies ahead of us - or why it will happen. If we remember that we are no more than infants nestled and growing in a Sacred Womb, why should we be surprised! Wombs are dark, cut off from the light outside. Living in God's Womb, we live in the holy Mystery of darkness, a safe darkness, because if we knew everything, we could not bear it now.
Then, Death becomes being born to a new life. When we've grown to our full stature in God's Holy Womb, no matter how long or how short our life is, God carries us through the passageway of Death out into the Light so we can finally look into our Heavenly Parent's luminous eyes!
How beautiful, how comforting, how secure a life we live inside the Sacred Womb of God. The holy Walls of this dwelling protect us from the evil of sin and keep us from being separated from our Beloved God. The more we love God, the more we will pray, reaching out to touch those Sacred Walls, listening to God's steady heartbeat, content in the fertile darkness, afraid to defile such a Holy Space and wound such a tender Mother. When Death comes, what a joy it will be to look into the merciful Face of the One Who bore us until we were ready to be born into Heaven.