The great danger for sincere people is rather surprising: “Be a good woman; be a good man.” It is dangerous, not because it seems like the virtuous path, but because we’re still living from our own resources. “Apart from me,” Jesus warned his closest friends, “you can do nothing” (John 15:5). He said that as he was explaining the vine-branch relationship. We are cut flowers, dear reader. We need more than a vase; we need to be grafted into a vine. And so union with God, oneness of being, ought to be what we crave, what we pray for, a central part of our language, the main thing we seek.
