As much as I love time to contemplate, at the end of an academic year I find that time is often short as I grade exams and attend those last committee and faculty meetings. However, I am reassured by the idea that we can, indeed, seek God in all things. One way that this is helpful to me when I am especially busy is to notice how much God is present in human relationships.
A former colleague of mine, now deceased, Fr. Michael Himes, cited an idea from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which a woman who had ceased to believe in God seeks counsel from a monk. He advises her to love each person with whom she comes into contact each day, and that, as a result, she will not be able to do anything other than to believe. Himes interprets it this way: “You cannot not believe in God if you truly love your brothers and sisters because you will experience your ability to love as being a gift to you, not of accomplishment by you.” (Doing the Truth in Love: Conversations About God, Relationships, and Service, 55)
While for me the issue is not a failure to believe in God but rather missing time to contemplate, that idea of loving others also helps me to find God in relationships. Even if my time for prayer is short in the morning, God awaits me all of the rest of the day: in the student who comes to office hours to ask about a paper in progress, in the work of fellow faculty trying to improve our course offerings, or in a conversation that I have at the microwave when I am warming up my lunch and another faculty member shares a sweet story about his child.
I have noticed that finding God in others requires pausing to notice the goodness of the other person in the moment. For example, before I meet a student in office hours or as I listen to a student offer a comment in class, I can take a second to appreciate internally the goodness of the existence of the other person. My students are not reducible to their grades or accomplishments; rather, they are beings made in the image of God. I do have to grade their work, but if I can pause periodically to remember, “This being is a reflection of divine love,” I find God in the work that I am doing, even in busy times. Likewise, when I serve at prison, I find God’s presence in the hospitality that the men offer during our group discussions and in their deep, often unrecognized, goodness.
Tiny pauses in the day to look back and appreciate where God has been in the everydayness of human relationships help me to find God even when I have little extended time to contemplate.