We are offered a gift that transcends raptures, believing, and afterlife. Moreover, the gift is an invitation to an extraordinary community here on earth; to participate with the divine–‘God without us will not as we without God cannot’–in the process of creation–‘on earth as it is in heaven.’

To have life—not to become religious, not to achieve moral purity, not to win the contest to gain doctrinal orthodoxy, but to have life—that is to be awakened to our incarnate birthright. It is to bring us to the experience of living in which we pass into new dimensions of life and cross the boundaries of ego, guilt, and fear that separate us from one another and from ourselves. That we “might have life and have it abundantly”—that we awaken to humanity in all its fullness; to belove all creatures and all of creation; to love ourselves and love one another with all our strength, heart, mind, soul, and body.