The manner in which we carry out all our work has a direct bearing on our spiritual health.
The manner in which we carry out all our work has a direct bearing on our spiritual health.
To do work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself with God's will in my work.I become an instrument for God to work through me.
"We don’t really have to do a perfect job."
"Nobody will be able to tell, though."
"That’s not the point, not the point at all.The old masters didn't care whether anyone could see their flaws or not.They wanted to do as well as they could, because their work was a gift to God, who deserved their best.That’s all gone; now what's important is whether anyone will notice the difference, and how much it will all cost.It changes the spirit of the building forever."
Ludmilla taught me that we can pray anywhere, during any kind of work that is being done attentively and well and to the best of our ability.In such work, God is present.We only have to know this and try to give it our heart.Many people wish to have spiritual development without obstacles or even effort, and so they will never understand God’s love or the poverty of our humanity.
A hidden river runs beneath the conscious layers of our lives.We become fatigued not from overwork, but from how much energy it takes to stage our lives in order to drown out the sounds of the river inside us.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
Society functions at its very best when each member finds security in their place in the social structure.When all members can be gainfully employed, yet have individual initiative, when they can excel in their own craft and find satisfaction in their work contributing to the overall goals of society, then there exists harmony and a sense of community.When members have an interest in the continuity of their community, great deeds can be accomplished.This is because the many work for the One.
Much of life…is about awakening to the interior experience.In our day-to-day living, we come to see how all of our physical journeying is not simply a temporal exercise, a transitory, earthly trek, but increasingly points to a shared and liberating inner passage . . .As Christianity and all the great religious traditions of the world testify, our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage leading to -- and beyond -- the gates of the heart.
There comes a time in the spiritual journey when you start making choices from a very different place . . .And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health, happiness, wisdom, and love, it’s the right choice.
The real journey in life is interior.
It is a matter of growth, deepening,
and of an ever greater surrender to the
creative love and grace in our hearts.
Everything we need for growing into a full, rich relationship with God is already available in our lives. We need to pray, stay open, and not become discouraged. A spiritual journey is not a competitive event; we can all be on a spiritual quest. God comes to each of us in the native language of our soul. Gradually the language grows and expands, but no one grows in just the same way as someone else. We need to accept ourselves as we are and keep ourselves open to being changed and shaped by a life lived in growing intimacy with God.
The outer path we take is public knowledge, but the path with heart is an inner one. The two come together when who we are that is seen in the world coincides with who we deeply are. As we grow wiser, we become aware that the important forks in the road are usually not about choices that will show up on any public record; they are decisions and struggles to do with choosing love or fear; anger or forgiveness; pride or humility. They are soul-shaping choices.
With each discovery of truth about ourselves, we come to a crossroad on our journey toward God.One path leads to denial and despair . .. the other to holiness.
From the forest branches fading
birdsong offered
Self-sacrifice to a huge silence.
Dark formlessness settled over all
diversity
Of land and water.As shadows, as particles,
my body
Fused with endless night.I came to rest
At the altar of the stars.Alone, amazed,
I stared
Upwards with hands clasped and said,
"Sun, you have removed
Your rays: show now your loveliest,
kindlier form
That I may see the Person who dwells in
me as in you."
There is a time in every life
when the very act
of looking back and taking stock
becomes essential
to going forward.
Without the light
that shines out of the darkness
of the past,
we cannot chart
a new path
to the future.
We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey.Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union.The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
A God seeker is a person on a journey.When the thirst has been awakened, we are no longer persons wandering aimlessly about, but persons who have begun to discern the bare outlines of a path.We become more than wanderers.It is a journey based upon the assumption that there is more to life than meets the eye.
There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through,
passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where
a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed
behind the facade of the common.
There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path.You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone.You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing, and then one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed.To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another.
There is healing in the universe.
There is a fabric that holds things together.
When it is ready . . . in its own good time,
shall it not bind together . . . all of us?
At first I was surprised that people with the same disease had such very different stories.Later I became deeply moved by these stories, by the people and the meaning they found in their problems, by the unsuspected strengths, the depths of love and devotion, the rich and human tapestry initiated by the pathology I was studying and treating. . .These stories engaged me at another, more hidden point.I too suffer from an illness . . . I listened to human beings who were suffering, and responding to their suffering in ways as unique as their fingerprints.Their stories were inspiring moving, important.In time, the truth in them began to heal me.
The more I can love everything -- the trees, the land, the water, my fellow men, women and children, and myself -- the more health I am going to experience and the more of myself I am going to be . . .
"Healing," Papa would tell me, "is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature."
Underneath all we are taught, there is a voice that calls to us beyond what is reasonable, and in listening to that flicker of spirit, we often find deep healing.This is the voice of embodiment calling us to live our lives like sheet music played, and it often speaks to us briefly in moments of deep crisis.Sometimes it is so faint we mistake its whisper for wind through leaves.But taking it into the heart of our pain, it can often open the paralysis of our lives. . . . the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.
Healing is a journey deep within oneself -- a search for soul, the essence of the self.It seeks to balance the inner and outer worlds to connect and to integrate.Healing is the reuniting of the body, mind and spirit.
Healing is embracing what is most feared;
healing is opening what has been closed,
softening what has hardened into obstruction,
healing is learning to trust life.
When you awaken your heart, you find to your surprise that your heart is empty.If you search for the awakened heart, there is nothing but tenderness.You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness.It occurs because your heart is completely open, exposed.It is the pure raw heart that has the power to heal the world.
I was never in a hurry in my life.He lives long who enjoys life and bears no jealousy of others, whose heart harbors no malice or anger, who sings a lot and cries a little, who rises and retires with the sun, who likes to work, and who knows how to rest.
Healing does not necessarily mean to become physically well or to be able to get up and walk around again.Rather, it means achieving a balance between the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions. . . .At the end of their lives [five-year-old children with leukemia] they have little or no pain.They are emotionally sound, and on an intellectual level they can share things it is almost impossible to believe could come from a child.To me this is a healing, although they are not well from our earthly point of view.
Healing is bringing oneself into harmony with the universe and the Divine creative force.It makes us whole and happy, content . . . and happiness is heaven.
Healing is not forcing the sun to shine, but letting go of that which blocks the light.
Healing is more than eliminating disease symptoms; it is a process of achieving wholeness, alignment, and integration that encompasses every level of our being.Healing encourages self-awareness and enables us to express our unique potential more fully in our work, study, and relationships with ourselves and others.The healing journey not only helps us connect to our own inner rhythms, but also brings us closer to our spiritual nature and the world around us.
The divine presence that we sense in sacred places is often reinforced by architecture and decoration that reflect our aspirations toward the heavens.A sacred place requires a clear spiritual focus and separation from its physical surroundings.The word "temple" (and the associated activity of contemplation) -- Latin templum --means a piece of land marked off from ordinary uses and dedicated to the divine.Sacred structures provide expressions of, rather than merely a shell for, numinous experience
The sacred cannot be precisely defined. Each of us perceives it through the lens of a unique personal history. For me, sacredness is an experience of the inner radiance of life, the unseen force that transforms and nourishes the physical world but is never limited by it. There is something more to it, a mystery that is never totally grasped.
I have learned to treat my garden as the sacred place it is and it continually nourishes me both in body and in spiritEarth is sacred too, and whatever we do to her will come back to us many times over. If we treat her as merely a resource and a place to throw our refuse, we will reap only death and disease. If we treat her as the sacred place she is, we will reap the benefits of living on sacred ground.;
Be aware of the sacred site . . .
Sacred sites are sacred because our
response to them is sacred.
There is a resonance between the sacred
within and the sacred without . . .
The sacred is within our hearts . . .
Visit sacred sites, yes.Bathe in the
resonance, inspire the divine.
But never forget where lies the holiest
power of all.
Shh!
Come in
within
I AM here
take off your shoes
kneel down
and
worship
wordlessly
in this
holy place
called
prayer.
We become aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane . . . something sacred shows itself to us . . . something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world.
When humans participate in ceremony, they enter a sacred space. Everything outside of that space shrivels in importance.Time takes on a different dimension.Emotions flow more freely.The bodies of participants become filled with the energy of life, and this energy reaches out and blesses the creation around them.
Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open.I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time.To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . .I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see.He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight.Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
Nature is a sacred space that has the power to draw us out of our small mind into the one Big Mind of God.During warm weather, praying and meditating outside in nature can naturally enhance your practice.You can pray anywhere, even on the subway, but whenever you find yourself in a place that feels sacred, you have already made the connection with God.
The mountains, rivers, earth
grasses, trees, and forests
are always emanating a subtle,
precious light,
day and night, always emanating
a subtle, precious sound,
demonstrating and expounding
to all people
the unsurpassed, ultimate truth.
To see all things at their origin, their beginning, puts us in kinship with all that lives: trees, birds, stars seem foreign to us only inasmuch as we perceive them outside of our common origin with them.To drink at the source of all that lives and breathes expands the heart and makes the blood sing, echoing the song of all the vital fluids in the world.To dwell near all beginnings is to draw infinitely near to that which creates both the unity and the diversity of all beings.
This earth is my sister: I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am, how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her.
"It doesn’t matter to most people that the wind sings in the trees or that a mountain shimmers in the sunlight.But you find life in all this, a life you can partake of."
I replied that no one understands nature: a tree bathed in sunlight, a weathered stone, an animal, a mountain, each has life, has a tale to tell, is a life, suffers, endures, experiences joy, dies -- but we
don’t understand it.
Be a gardener.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.
Blessed are the men and women
who are planted on Your earth in Your garden,
Who grow as Your trees and flowers grow,
who transform their darkness to light.
Their roots plunge into darkness;
their faces turn toward the light.
All those who love You are beautiful;
they overflow with Your presence
so that they can do nothing but good.
There is infinite space in Your garden;
all men, all women are welcome here;
all they need do is enter.