Two months into the pandemic, I began a practice I called “When I look for God”. With so much changing so quickly, I was looking to find space during each day when I could ground myself amidst the uncertainty. The previous five years had opened up a spiritual yearning spurred by a life-shifting moment while surfing when God became profoundly known to me. These encounters of grace began to happen with some frequency. I was both compelled and confused by this new awakening.

God has always been elusive to me. I grew up Catholic, attended church on Sundays, went to catechism. I was baptized as an infant, received my first communion at seven, and was confirmed at 11. None of this brought me any closer to God.

I finally rejected the Church as a young teen for its part in sustaining and promoting human biases I couldn’t reconcile with a loving God – among them misogyny, homophobia, abuse. Then I felt myself called in middle age to explore what seemed to be deeply embedded in my DNA. Was this a hangover from my early life? I struggled to recognize a firmly constructed self as skeptic.

During lockdown, when I made it a practice to look for God in the newly limited frame of my existence, I would take a walk outside in the early morning, sit on a bench at the shore, and cast a wide gaze. I’d take deep breaths to clear a path to receive God’s presence. Sometimes: nothing. I tried not to want it so badly as to belie the point of the practice. I’d wait........

© The Guardian