Looking for my higher power—my highest self—is as simple as being touch with my physicalness. My first inkling of this was years ago when a mentor, at the end of a conversation sensing my frustration and out-of-touchness, asked me to remember the last time I felt IN touch. I pulled up a moment. “Where is it in your body?” she asked. l told her it was in the region of my solar plexis, a sort of calm coolness.”That’s God,” she said.

And so it is. Years later, working to stay in the moment as a way to heal anxiety, I learned that the quickest, most accessible way to be fully where l was, not in the past, not in the future, was to connect with my senses. Over and over, when the freak out looms, I learned to use my five senses, and my breath, to ground myself in all there is, really—the present. Lo and hold, wonder of wonders, along the way that practice has merged with my meditation and prayer practice, to put me ever closer to the Source. I am not physical becoming spiritual, I am spiritual being physical.

Where’s God? She’s right here, in me, with me. As psychologist Belleruth Naprastek says, my body is my oldest friend and closest companion. When I honor it by being in touch with sensation and breath—as well as feeding it well and moving it gently and purposefully—I have my whole life to live, really and truly, right here and right now, right now and forever. Amen!