on where to find God

Sister Helen Prejean CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking, writes:

I was forty years old before I realised the connection between the Jesus who said, "I was in prison and you came to me, I was hungry and you gave me to eat," between that and the real-life experience of being in situations where I was actually with people who were hungry and people who were in prison and people who were struggling with racism that permeates this society...

My image of finding God is that our little boats are always on the river. We often are in a stall, and we wait and nothing moves, and everything seems the same in life. But when we get involved in a situation like this -- for me it was to be involved with poor people -- it's like our boat begins to move on this current. The wind starts whistling through our hair, and the energy and life is there...

To me, to find God is to find the whole human family. No one can be disconnected from us. Which is another way of talking about the Body of Christ. That we are all part of this together.

And I feel that everybody needs to be in contact with poor people. That in fact, as Jim Wallis... has said, we need to accept that one of the spiritual disciplines -- just like reading the Scriptures and praying and liturgy -- is physical contact with the poor. It's an essential ingredient. If we are never in their presence, if we never eat with them, if we never hear their stories, if we are always separated from them, then I think something really vital is missing.

from How Can I Find God? edited by James Martin