Quotations

From the very beginning of time, human beings have celebrated divine visitations by speaking, writing, singing, drawing, and dancing them. We cannot tell of God's presence in our souls. We create, we build, we choreograph; we play music, paint paintings, or write poetry to communicate this divine presence. For the essential place, the point within us penetrated by the Spirit, is our creative soul. The Creator Spirit seeks out our creativity. Fire begets fire.

... a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.

My greatest challenge is to live the daily life. To create a life that is aware, when all of us fall into unconsciousness all the time. To bring some modicum of consistency, of heart and caring, to every moment... And the other challenge is to render this. To be available to bring beauty through, or bring awareness through... To open the eyes, to open the heart, to feel compassion on a regular basis. To strip myself down to wherever I have to go.

Into this Dark, beyond all light, we pray to come and, unseeing and unknowing, to see and to know the One that is beyond seeing and beyond knowing...That is to do as sculptors do, drawing the statue latent there...and displaying the beauty hidden there.

All things speak to me.
Now this color, now that shape.
Now the clear call of the loon.
The forest sees me coming
And each tree says, "Look at me.
See, I reveal the Beautiful." . . .

Once a reporter asked Einstein, "What is the most important question in the world?" He replied, "The most important question in the world is, do you want a peaceful, happy, abundant world in which to live, or do you want a foreboding, fearful, and scarce world?"

The reporter slightly puzzled, asked, "Why is this the most important question in the world?"

Einstein replied, "Because whatever you choose, you will create."

It is the nature of a word to reveal what is hidden. The word that is hidden still sparkles in the darkness and whispers in the silence. It entices us to pursue it and to yearn and sigh after it. For it wishes to reveal to us something about God.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

[Humans became human] by breaking into the daylight of language—whether by good fortune or bad fortune, whether by pure chance, the spark jumping the gap because the gap was narrow enough, or by the touch of God, it is not for me to say here.

The term Gaia has caught on among those seeking a new ecological spirituality as a religious vision. Gaia is seen as a personified being, an immanent divinity. Some see the Jewish and Christian male monotheistic God as a hostile concept that rationalizes alienation from and neglect of the earth...I agree with much of this critique, yet I believe that merely replacing a male transcendent deity with an immanent female one is an insufficient answer...

It is all too easy and too simple to disdain as "superstition" everything one cannot understand, but the ancients themselves knew very well what they meant when they used symbolic language...the Spirit can always come back to breathe fresh life into the symbols and rites and give them back their lost meaning and the fullness of their original virtue.

one
unkind
word
could
tip
the
balance

A garden offers ground for growth, not only for plants that nourish and delight, but for engagement of self and world. Whether in the back forty acres or a small sunlit corner, for man or woman alike, to partake in the specific act of nurturing life brings insight not found in other pursuits. There is a sacramental element in watching a living thing flourish under our care toward its full potential, and what this nurturing opens in us becomes written on the human soul.

in time of daffodils
(who know the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how...

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me

The Bishop's day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Still the day was not complete if cold or wet weather prevented him from spending an hour or two in the garden before going to bed... He was alone with himself, collected. Peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with that of the Other, affected in the darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God... Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed at it. He did not study God: he was dazzled (by God).

"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?"

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!

It came to me while reflecting on that woodland encounter with the night that there are two very valuable spiritual gifts that simplicity gives to us. It seems the more we can strip our lives down to essentials, the more deliberately and awake we can live; with few wants and more time for silence and contemplation, the more we have access to our inner resources. The more lightly we walk on this earth, the more she gives to us. I call these spiritual gifts inner smiling and outgoingness of the heart.

Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.

nomads, natives, wanderers
carriers of life's precious elements
they know what holds value
the earth, the sky, people, fish, animals, plants, insects
all that God created is good but man is not complete
we accumulate things, build things, save things
what a load to carry on your life's journey
we are bent and slowed by the weight
let go of the things
learn from the wanderers
the diamonds and pearls will now be there for you to see.

I thought about the perfection of the morning, tried to name what it is about the morning that is different from the rest of the day. Is it the stillness? And, I thought, often on Sundays there is an all-day silence, or on rainy days or during off seasons; whatever this perfection might be, it's more than the absence of noises made by humans and their machines... In the purity of the morning, I understand how much more there is to the world than meets the eye...