The answer is always the same: it is our own human blocks that prevent full vision, full healing. Divine Love is present always: we get glimpses; we get intimations; we get hints; we get glorious flashes of awareness. We even get moments of healing. But still our lens is dusty with fear and doubt; there are streaks in our Seeing. That's just how it is.

And then there's another thing we do which blocks full experience of Love: we have demands about the form It must take. This is like insisting water come only in ice cubes; it denies us the joy of waterfalls, mist, ocean waves, rainshowers, snowflakes, tea, honeydew melon. Love comes in whatever way will teach us best; and if the form seems atypical to our particular mindset - well, so be it. Brother Lawrence learned about Love from pots and pans; Jane Goodall learned about Love from chimpanzees; Carl Jung learned about Love from his mistress, Father Damien learned about Love from lepers, Mother Theresa learned about Love from the dying.

Love comes in many forms. Make no judgment - they are all Divine.

Somewhere inside we know that. So daily silence is the tool we use to keep cleaning off our lens, wiping away old hurt and recurring disbelief. If we are patient, and if we persist, our lens becomes clearer and clearer and clearer. We move as fast as we can. One day, without warning, we see Love with Clarity. And that is that.

Here's a little story that demonstrates how cruelly distrust clouds vision. It's a true story. Actually, it has a happy ending, but I'm not recounting the ending here -- I'm telling you about the part that makes you want to weep Perhaps when you hear it you may recall a time when you, too, acted with hesitation rather than with a trusting heart.

Shortly after the 2nd World War ended, a number of kind American families offered to adopt and raise orphaned children who had been released from concentration camps but no longer had a home.

One Quaker family chose four German brothers and sisters who had been imprisoned for years and had no living family. The couple arranged for the four children to travel by ship to New York, where they would pick them up and take them home. On the day the ship docked, they were waiting on the pier, carrying bundles of toys and ice cream cones to welcome their little orphans.

Heart alight, they rushed up to the four children as they disembarked, and wrapped them in their arms. Then, as a welcome-to-America gift, the new mother handed each child an ice cream cone.

The children had never seen ice cream cones before, and they clutched them in awkward hands, looking nervously to their oldest brother for guidance. These were children who had been tortured for several years, and barely knew any other kind of existence. Acting as leader and protector, the oldest brother ducked his head down and took a small taste of his ice cream. Immediately he straightened up and heaved the cone down on the ground.

"Don't eat it!" he cried out to his small brother and sisters. "Don't touch it! They're trying to freeze our tongues!"

You see? They were, at that moment, unable to grasp the notion that someone was actually offering them affection.

You can imagine the patience and compassion that couple needed to restore an awareness of Love in those children.