For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

*Philippians 1.8 (ESV)

Christ, transcending time, ethnicity, and religion, is Light, is Life. This Light is as with-us as Jesus with his first disciples. Spiritual baptism, of which outer baptism is a sign, testifies that we can grow in sharing pure affections arising from the Light, into which our whole being is immersed by Love to love. We agree, in this depth of Communion grace with Grace, to the death of our love~we come to see our love no longer needed to the work of the Light. We are glad to confess its full insufficiency. We will no more to love with our love, so to be sharers more deeply in the deep withinness with others that is the joy of all walking in and by the grace of the Light, which is Life. And the prayerful being knows this deep withinness, being known himself or herself by the Light in the Light, as much in the silent being-among others as in any expression in word or act. This is one reason the contemplatives are a gift that few others can appreciate and much needed among them. The contemplative embodies a fellowship prior to all efforts at being-with or sharing, and shows that much of it is based purely on human likes and dislikes. All attempts to love arise from Love the contemplative wordlessly incarnates as his or her primary gift to the world. That in which he or she is least understood and, possibly, most misunderstood, is his or her most precious offering to others and Life Itself.