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The Quakers refer to meeting God in the other. This is what happened that Thanksgiving. The Grace within me recognized and responded to the Grace within the other. I could never claim credit for that. Possibly, the most I could say, which is enough: It simply happened. God happens like that, and that happening is Christ. In spontaneous kindness, Christ is born again, and again, and again, ..., for Love is born again, and again, and again, ...
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Now, when is this Christ born, when does Love create anew by the agency of Holy Spirit? In the encounter, wherein pure kindness arises, timelessness comes forth from the background to the foreground, self moves back, Spirit moves forward. Why? For that of Spirit has the nature of Spirit, so being of timelessness. So, communion is timeless. Communion arose in the being-with that man at the shelter. Christ is never born in time; this Christ was not born a little over 2000 years ago, Jesus was. Christ is untouched with time, ever-knew Eternity arising in communion. In this sense, most true, nothing about communion arising between the man and me at the homeless shelter is what happened, for what happened was a happening, free of time, so Eternal. Communion as something that happened betrays the truth of its Eternality, yet our words, pointing to Eternality, speak from time. Truly, my encounter with the homeless man years ago is now.
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So, pure kindness, transcending all religion, ethicality, and civility, in one is drawn by and to kindness in being drawn by and to Spirit. This pure kindness is known only to the being who is the passive vessel for the Divine graces. He or she goes within quietly, so to go without and be the means of Love to love. Whatever kindness he or she is a conduit and sign of, for that one has surely become a sacrament apart from any institutional religion, cannot be claimed as his or her kindness. Most purely, one cannot say in Grace, "I was kind." Kindness is present, but no I. In graceful Grace there is essentially no one present to be kind. In this essential absence of all self to self-assert, ironically Grace appears to touch with Love the other. Is, then, a self present? Only a self-in-communion, so, really, no self at all, only Christ, only communion. In this sense, the more absent you are, the more present Love is, the relative self dissolving as a separative entity in the absoluteness of Grace. Then the sign dies within the Signified, all words of the Word become the Word. Communion, then, arising from One, returns to One, which it is drawn to naturally. This happens in one moment.
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