“In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence”

— Richard Rohr

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Richard Rohr 43

American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franc… 1943

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

The Clowns of God (1981)
Context: Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.

Author's Note (at the beginning of the novel)

“Presence of death standing by makes a sacrament of tenuous relationships.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Yonder Mark (ed.), The Quotable Gordimer, 2014.

“It is quite ordinary for spiritual friends to be able, naturally, spontaneously, and almost effortlessly, to discern the presence of the Divine in each other. When we are really awake, we cannot miss the presence of Divine Reality; it is always calling us.”

Wayne Teasdale (1945–2004) American writer

Source: A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life (2003), p. 87

“A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)
Context: According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you... By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. (p. 45-46)