Having New Eyes: The God That Everybody Knows

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”— Marcel Proust

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”— Albert Einstein

In recent years psychologists studying human flourishing have come to a surprising conclusion: some of the most powerful moments in our lives are often very small.

A friend listens when we are hurting.

A child laughs with delight.

A stranger shows kindness.

The sky turns gold at sunset.

Someone forgives us.

These moments do not look dramatic. They rarely make the news. Yet research suggests they may be among the building blocks of a meaningful and flourishing and spiritual life.

I noticed it yesterday having a birthday lunch with two friends.  Now, between you and me, even though I wanted to see my friends, I felt like I had a lot of balls in the air.  They probably did too. It had taken us weeks to make this get together happen. It was hard to just stop our business. Slow down and go to lunch.  The lunch lasted over two hours, close to three maybe. We might still be there if our derrieres could take it.

Nothing particularly deep was discussed.  We mostly reflected on the funeral of a friend who was pretty human. Full of fun and flaws. Like us.  The death and funeral brought to mind many other people in our long story of life together.

It seemed like we had a lot more grace as we sat there and helped each other remember names and relationships and stories. The experience was both peaceful and real.

We kept coming back with gratitude to the richness of our lives with these assorted human beings. I experienced it as a discovery.  Looking back and forth in time with newish eyes.

The whole kit and kaboodle felt...well, really good. Maybe even bordering on sacred.

Positive psychology researchers like Barbara Fredrickson have found that experiences of love, gratitude, awe, and connection have a “broaden and build” effect. They expand our awareness and slowly build emotional and relational strength. These moments help people become more resilient, more connected, and more hopeful.

Another psychologist, Kenneth Pargament, has studied what happens when people treat certain experiences as sacred. He found that when people see relationships, acts of kindness, or moments of beauty as sacred, they value them more deeply and care for them more intentionally.

In other words, when we pause and recognize certain experiences as deeply meaningful—or even sacred—we tend to absorb them more fully.

Ancient wisdom traditions knew something similar long before modern psychology. The writers of the wisdom literature constantly urged people to pay attention to life.

Notice the goodness.

Notice the beauty.

Notice the kindness.

Notice the gifts hidden in ordinary moments.

And that brings me to a story told by the spiritual teacher Mark Yaconelli. I have written about it before, but it is so good, I’d like to share it again.

Yaconelli once agreed to teach a class on “the nature of God” in a facility where incarcerated men were preparing to return to society.

Eighteen men standing around in orange jumpsuits began to sit in a circle of chairs. Most were uninterested. Some tried to nap. One man finally shouted, “How long is this going to take?”

When Yaconelli told them the class would last an hour, the room groaned.

One young man finally said what many were thinking. “I don’t believe in all that God stuff.”

Yaconelli surprised them. “I’m not here to talk about your beliefs about God,” he said. “I’m interested in your experiences of God.”

One man asked, “What counts as an experience of God?”

Yaconelli thought for a moment and said something simple.

“Maybe an experience of God is a moment that feels sacred. A moment when you feel overwhelmed by love, or deep peace, or connection with others.”

He invited the men to think quietly about their lives and remember moments like that.

At first there was silence. Then the stories began.

One man remembered coming home from jail and finding his entire family waiting for him with music, food, and hugs. “Every one of them hugged me,” he said. “Best day of my life.”

Another told about sitting on a mountain all night with a gun, planning to end his life. As the sun rose he felt such an overwhelming sense of love that he put the gun away and never considered suicide again.

Another talked about holding his nephew who looked at him with delight and admiration.

A heavily tattooed man described his aunt hugging him and crying when he went to prison. “I had no idea anyone loved me that much,” he said.

Finally the last man spoke. He had sat with his back to the group the whole time.

Without turning around he said quietly, “Right now. Listening to you guys talk about things we never talk about. I call this moment sacred.”

The room fell silent.

Yaconelli finally said, “This is the God who is alive and known to every human being.”

The young man who earlier rejected belief in God responded, “That’s not the God I grew up with.”

Exactly.

Many people grow up with an image of God as a powerful ruler sitting somewhere far away in the sky. That image has shaped religious imagination for centuries.

But the prison circle suggests another possibility.

What if many people encounter the sacred not primarily through belief debates—but through experiences of love, gratitude, awe, wonder, hope, peace, compassion, and connection?

What if naming these experiences sacred—or even calling them experiences of God—actually strengthens the very qualities that help us flourish as human beings on this little blue dot rolling and spinning around in space?

There are good reasons to think it might.

When we label a moment sacred, we tend to linger with it. Instead of rushing past it, we take it in. We see it as holy.

That deepens meaning.

Sacred moments also help train our attention. Human beings are wired to notice problems and threats. Sacred language helps us pause and notice goodness.

That strengthens gratitude.

When people experience something as sacred, they often feel they have received a gift rather than earned an achievement. That sense of giftedness deepens humility and appreciation.

Sacred memories also strengthen connection. When people share stories of love, compassion, forgiveness, or hope, they often discover their common humanity.

And finally, remembering sacred moments builds resilience. These memories remind us that goodness and love exist even when life becomes difficult.

This kind of spirituality looks very different from unhealthy religion.

Unhealthy religion often produces fear, shame, and hostility. It divides the world into insiders and outsiders.

Healthy spirituality does something else. It helps people notice life-giving realities—love, gratitude, compassion, hope, peace—and nurture them.

Of course, sacred moments can be experienced while still facing the world honestly.

That brings us to the Lenten season for Christians around the world.

Lent is often described as a season of repentance. But it can also be understood as a season of attention.

A season when we slow down enough to notice what is truly sacred in life. The problem is that we often rush right past sacred moments that are available to us if we just open our eyes and ears and hearts.

A friend listens to us.

A child smiles.

A sunset fills the sky with color.

And what do we do?

We check our phone.

We glance at a screen.

We hurry on.

Lent invites us to slow down and take these moments in.

Between now and Easter you might try a simple practice.

At the end of each day, pause for a moment and ask yourself a few questions:

When did I notice kindness today?

When did I feel gratitude?

When did I experience love?

When did hope appear?

When did someone show compassion?

Where, when, how did I sense the Sacred?

Pause and relive the moment for a few seconds.

Let it sink in. Maybe even share one of these moments with someone else.

Another helpful practice is to stay with a good moment for twenty seconds. Neuroscientists suggest that lingering briefly with positive experiences helps them become more deeply embedded in the brain.

So when something beautiful happens, pause.

Notice.

Breathe.

Receive it.

You might even whisper quietly to yourself:

“Thank you.”

Or perhaps:

“God was here.”

By the time Easter arrives you may notice something surprising. The sacred was never far away.

It was appearing all along—in love, gratitude, compassion, hope, and peace.

The God that everybody knows may not always look like a distant ruler on a throne in the sky. Sometimes the Sacred appears much closer than that. Right in the middle of ordinary life.

Right in the flow of love moving between us. At lunch with old friends. Or maybe even a community meal with our neighbors.

How might we journey together to the Good Life by working with our attention…noticing and appreciating the good, the Sacred - the God that everybody knows?

One day, Mother Teresa took in a woman off the streets of Calcutta. Her body was a mess of open sores infested with bugs. Mother Teresa patiently bathed her, cleaning and dressing her wounds.

The woman never stopped shrieking insults and threats at her. Mother Teresa only smiled.

Finally, the woman snarled, “Sister, why are you doing this? Not everyone behaves like you. Who taught you?”

She replied simply, “My God taught me.” When the woman asked who this god was, Mother Teresa kissed her on the forehead and said: “You know my God. My God is called love.”