The primacy of now

George Macleod, the 20th century Celtic/Scottish saint said that, "the primacy of God as Now is what we must recover in Christians mysticism." Later quoting George MacDonald he says, "'Whatever wakes my heart and mind, thy presence is, my Lord.' Our innumerable 'nows' are our points of contact with God." Too often, I think, we relegate the perceived presence of God to the prayer closet. Bidden or not not bidden, God is here. All life is sacred as we see it enfolded in the presence of God.

Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, talks of how Arthur Greeves introduced him to the experience of the "homely": "Often he recalled my eyes from the horizon just to look through a hole in a hedge, to see nothing more than a farmyard in its mid-morning solitude, and perhaps a gray cat squeezing its way under a barn door, or a bent old woman with a wrinkled, motherly face coming back with an empty bucket from the pigsty. But best of all we liked it when the Homely and the unhomely met in sharp juxtaposition; if a little kitchen garden ran steeply up a narrowing enclave of fertile ground surrounded by outcroppings and furze, or some shivering quarry pool under a moonrise could be seen on our left, and on our right the smoking chimney and lamp-lit window of a cottage that was just settling down for the night."

I'm not sure I understand all of what Lewis and Greeves meant by "homely", but part of what I take from it is that nothing escapes the redeeming presence of God.