Kevin Cummings

“We do not see God in contemplation - we know Him by love: for his pure love and when we taste the experience of loving God for his own sake alone, we know by experience who and what he is.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

“There are other ways too in which God is "absent." As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

“The day when God is absent, when He is silent—that is the beginning of prayer. Not when we have a lot to say, but when we say to God, "I can't live without You, why are You so cruel, so silent?" This knowledge that we must find or die—that makes us break through to the place where we are in the Presence.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray