Thursday, August 6, 2026
Presence can be thought of as “sensing prior-ness,” or recognizing that being itself holds ultimate priority. Pre and prior are fundamentally related to primacy, or foremost-ness. I call this careful sensing a preeminence—a state that transcends your awareness before you even notice its fullness. It is a sense of joyful anticipation, not an ominous looming.
Absence is tricky. The prefix ab- means away. To be ab-sent is to be sent away or empty, just as the Magnificat proclaims: “The rich he hath sent empty away.” Ab-sence can be thought of as “sensing away-ness,” or sensing the aft-most.
Resent is an interesting one, too. It means to be sent again. It is the condition of being permanently stuck in the aft-most. You can think of these movements as Alpha (the pre-sent) and Omega (the aft-sent): sensing the foremost and sensing the aft-most.
What is fascinating about absence, however, is that you still know it. When you suddenly snap out of a daze, you vaguely recall not “being here.” Your eyes can read an entire paragraph on a page, yet the words were never comprehensively read. You were absent, yet an underlying awareness recorded the gap.
Because you can track how pre-sent you are, this traveling from foremost to aft-most reveals a strange journey across a spectrum. If you can recall being absent-minded (the aft-most), and you can remember when you are focused and present (the foremost), then you are actually the UTMOST which binds the two.
The UTMOST realizes and witnesses this entire journey from foremost to aft-most. That is because you are inherently omniscient and omnipresent, even at the very tail-end—the Omega of ab-sence.
Remember the moments you drift to Omega, and be present and sense Alpha.
Then, you align with the UTMOST and constant peace of lux aeterna (Perpetual Light).