Absent from our Lives. St. Augustine, in a famous prayer after his conversion, expresses this well: "Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved! You were within me, but I was outside and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you." (Confessions, Book 7).
''You were within me, but I was outside." Few phrases more accurately describe how we relate to God, life, love, and community than does that line from Augustine. We can have so rich a life and yet be so deeply restless; it's why we all generally look everywhere else rather than to our own actual lives for love and delight; and it's why we are perennially so deeply restless.
This restlessness cannot be stilled by a journey outward. It's inward that we need to go. Inside of our own actual lives, beyond our restless yearnings and fantasies, God, love, community, meaning, timeless significance and everything else that we search for, are already there.
