Dear Homeschooling Friends,

Morning inspirations often appear dim to me later in the day. It happened today when I woke up with the early morning sun shining into my eyes and the inspiration to write about what it means to "see" - or not to see - God.

First I decided to write my thoughts at a coffee shop. When I arrived I discovered they were closed (on a Saturday morning of all days!). With nowhere to sit I drove back home. As I was preparing to write at home, my sister walked up the stairs from the garage. She had just come home for the weekend and had the latest news from college. This news sent me reeling with old thoughts and recent memories... things that seemed far more pressing than my morning inspiration.

But - to see God?

Yes, I have more experience with not seeing God actually. Romano Guardini writes: "If I am not at least prepared to love God, I cannot 'see' him. His image will become more and more vague, disappear behind other things, and dissolve into nothingness."

Here is a personal example. I start to read today's morning prayer that goes like this:

Radiant Dawn of our salvation
Hope of life for all the earth!

Meanwhile my mind goes like this:

Oh, sure, here we go again praising (in chorus) the One who must be praised. But I don't feel anything - "Radiant Dawn" or no "Radiant Dawn." Who wrote this garbage anyway? And why do I even try to believe; I know I never have. Look how much happier I would be if. . . .

Imagine if this inability to see the point of God stayed with me always. Would not that be the state Guardini talks about, where the image of God has become vague, useless, meaningless? Sooner or later I would certainly lose my faith altogether. Yet sometimes these thoughts go on for weeks at a time.

The shadow that darkens my sight comes, I think, precisely from what I think I see around me everyday in the world at large. For instance, as I walked down Newbury Street on Thursday, coming out of my first architecture class in Boston, I felt utterly overwhelmed by what I saw. Newbury Street was abuzz with life as ever. Coffee shops, book-music-clothing stores: everything designed to please my age group. People talking, people flirting, people on cell phones, people shopping. Disturbed people, happy people. And the question came:

-Where do you stand in all this, boy?
-I guess I don't know.
-Are you going to live the secular life? You know you'd better learn how to get by.
-But...
-Or are you with Guardini, "at least prepared to love God?" Make up your mind.

How small God looked on Newbury Street! How powerfully I felt the presence of something else that threatened to envelope me. I realize how possible it is, through our own weakness, to lose sight of God, and how difficult it is because of our weakness to regain that vision. Think of Susan who never returned to Narnia. "In such a case," writes Guardini, "we must exercise patience and trust that God will not abandon us, his creature. He who has once created may also create again."