I realize that all I learned, I knew already. But all I learned was also new. My only hope was to make Jesus more fully the center of my life, the heart of my heart, the lover of my soul, the bridegroom of my spirit. He was always there, in a soft, gentle, hidden way. Yet he is there now as though he had never been there. He is always the same and never the same, always absent, always present, always searched for, always found. That’s what God’s love is about. The Lover and the Beloved are two and yet one, separated and yet in full communion, in anguish yet filled with ecstatic joy…. A new decade has begun; nothing can be predicted. Yet all is already held safe in the divine embrace that holds me too.