Today many people are incapable of living intensely in the present, of feeling what they experience. The old monks developed a method of living completely in the present...a method of meditation they called ruminatio...to chew over. So they took words from scripture into their mouth and kept chewing them over. They repeated them in their hearts, considered and reconsidered them, looked at the word from all sides. The word became flesh in them. It changed them. It gave them something to hold onto in their spiritual unrest and the noisy world. It enabled them to live completely for the moment.

Only when I am reconciled with myself can I think about reconciling other people around me, who are at odds with me or with others. Reconciliation means peacemaking, clearing the way for the different parties, building a bridge between quarreling groups. But it does not mean smoothing everything over, making everything harmonious. Different points of view must remain. Reconciliation means taking the other person or group seriously, and also taking myself and my needs seriously.

All that we love mirrors who we are. To be so imbued with love that we reflect it back with our whole being is a fundamental human longing ~ not only to love another man or woman, but actually to become love. When you become love you love everything around you. You greet every human being with love and draw love out of them. ~ You feel you are loved by God, so that God's love streams through you. Everything you do is marked by this love. You do your work for love ~ You do not have to create love in yourself. You have only to drink at the spring of divine love, which is bubbling up in you and is always enough.