A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
God acts upon us inescapably through the people
who befriend, touch and influence our lives.
Silence is the property, the contemplative quality, the fruit of faith. Interior, mystical silence is a silence which stems from the intensity of loving faith ... the interior result of a heart that loves intensely. The presence in our hearts of a secret to be kept brings about a density which is interior silence. Communication of secrets is the sign which manifests and proves the friendship and total trust of a friend.
Thou hast made me known to friends
whom I knew not;
Thou hast given me seats in homes
not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near and
made brothers and sisters of strangers.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibility not born until they arrive, and it is
only by this meeting a new world is born
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song--
The song from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
My friends have made the story of my life.
In a thousand ways they have turned all my
limitations into beautiful privileges and enabled
me to walk serene and happy in the shadow
cast by my deprivation.
Friends have been defined as people who know you at your worst and like you anyway, people in whose company you can be yourself. But perhaps more than anything else, friends are people who care about you for who you are, not what you can do for them. There is a kind of holiness in true friendship, because it makes sure that we are never alone when we desperately need to not be alone.
"You don't need a big sister," Lulu said, "you need a friend. I'd much rather be that."
"Okay," Emily muttered shyly. "Only I don't know why. I'm just a kid."
"You know things most adults don't even think of. You care about the same things I do. That's a lot of what a friend really is. And you're strong. I've needed that. And you share your world, and you don't judge it. Those are very grown-up things; and Emily, I can't name one of my so-called friends who have them all."
If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You'll find that all human beings are just like you, so you'll be able to relate to them more easily. That gives you a spirit of friendship.
I asked the old couple what secrets they could tell me about living long and well. At first they looked at each other and laughed, then he declared,
"Things are as they are. I know my wife and she knows me. We don't hide from each other. We don't ask each other lots of questions, we aren't anxious, running around all the time. Everything is open between us. We say our prayers and do our work. Most of the day I am outside, and she is inside, and when we unite, we enjoy our company, thanks be to God."
The Mikmaq on the Atlantic coast have no sound for Nature. They have "space" or "place of creation" ... they have cultural literacy with the ecosystem ... every aspect of nature to Mikmaqs is Spirit. They live in harmony with this intelligible essence. The Mikmaq can perceive the web.
I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heavens,
The glorius sun's lifegiving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.
Nature soothes, heals, and teaches with her silence.
Arriving daffodils will make no sound,
will blow no trumpets -- only the earthworm
close to its root, burrowing underground,
will hear the upsurge, feel the green stems yearn.
Beauty returns to Earth, devoid of noise,
devoid of clamor. Now it lifts its head
epitome of stillness and of poise
and in unbroken silence all is said.
As mind slowly empties itself,
nature undresses herself.
Robert could not find the answer; his mind was driving him in circles. There was only one way to make it stop. Robert walked across the fields at dusk into the Forest of Welferding. His better self always seemed to come out in nature, perhaps because he had come from and would eventually die and go into nature. He felt the cool moisture on his skin, smelled the musky moss tucked between the stones along the brook, walking until he almost forgot why he'd come. The sky was filled with stars with no air raid sirens, no distant roaring of planes. In the forest Robert had caught a glimpse of what the world could be like without war, and it was good.
When we enter the Stillness and listen, we feel the aliveness that is all around us. We give ourselves the opportunity to be a part of the vibrant, living, natural world. The Stillness brings a deep serenity into our hearts and a vital life force into our bodies. When we practice Entering the Silence in nature, there is no frantic separation between the creatures of the forest and the gentleness of our hearts.
Nothing has the potential to move us off dead center quite as powerfully as unexpected encounters in nature. From the meadows to the mountaintops, from the devoted pet to the flight of the bumblebee--the ways that nature nurtures us bring tears to our eyes and resolve to our hearts. And we are often brought into the place of allowing the spirit to finally get through to us. The possibilities are endless--the motion of the tides, the cleansing of a rainstorm, the dormancy of winter--all remind us that a force greater than ourselves turns the clock of this universe. Nature immerses us in that power.
Nature is the great teacher, the book of life to be read and understood. That's why it is important not just to protect the natural world, but to guide it to the highest level of perfection. Our task as spiritual people is to foster an intimate bond between the world of nature--rivers, mountains, oceans, animals, forests--and our own felt nature. When one is thriving, the other will find needed support.
If we will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, we see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth.
The earth is at the same time mother,
she is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moisture,
all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw materials
for humankind, but also
the substance of Incarnation.
Each creature that Love made must live its own true nature.
Made of the stuff of probability waves, starlight, planetary cycling, mighty mountains, continents, and oceans of our silver blue sphere, genetic journeys, language, learning, and loving, we each were birthed by this glorious universe that continues to show us its awesome majesty with each year cycling, each day dawning, each breath repeated, and each moment unfolding. We can only be joyous with the realization that so much of this awesome majesty is reflected in human consciousness. It is precisely this fact that enables us to call ourselves Sparks of God.
I was looking at the sky, just watching. I don't know how to say it, but I felt everything was perfect and connected--it's like there was no room even to think. It felt like my chest could explode and be the sun and the clouds.
Prayer consists of attention ... all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.
United heart to heart in prayer,
we create a world of radiant life,
overflowing abundance,
and lasting peace
as we awaken to the power
of Love within.
Prayer is a sacrament,
an outer, visible expression
of an inner, invisible grace--
or intention.
In centering, we begin to leave aside our own thoughts and images and feelings and to make space for the Spirit to begin to operate in us through the gifts. Outside the time of prayer we begin--and often others begin before us--to perceive the presence of these wonderful gifts in our daily lives. These are the fruits by which we judge the "tree" of our centering prayer. It is only through these fruits and the healing they represent that we can know the spirit is working in our lives through this deep, quiet communion with Love at the center of our being.
Prayer is an energy that, like oxygen, feeds our whole being even when we are not aware of it. When we pray, a positive, life-enhancing energy that affects us physically, emotionally, intellect-ually, and spiritually is activated within us. Prayer ministers to us. It engages the creative energy of the universe, Love. This divine energy unites with our own deepest, truest intention and goes into action. We ingest a higher, more refined kind of thinking, and this higher vibration brings its nutrients to our whole being.
Center yourself to God and PRAY night and day "without ceasing." ALL you do, think, or read can be made into prayer. Great music, art, literature, architecture, friendships are, or can be, forms of prayer. What is gained by prayer can never be lost. PRAYER is eternity breathing in time.
Center yourself to God and PRAY night and day "without ceasing." ALL you do, think, or read can be made into prayer. Great music, art, literature, architecture, friendships are, or can be, forms of prayer. What is gained by prayer can never be lost. PRAYER is eternity breathing in time.
True prayer requires no word, no chant
no gesture, no sound.
It is communion, calm and still
with our own godly Ground.
If prayer is getting in your way, cut it out!
Stop praying! Just BE prayer!
Prayer is the process by which one continually empties out what one thinks one knows and surrenders to the mystery in the moment ... Prayer is an opening on your part to receive the gifts of God, an opening to God's unconditional love for you, an opening to God's unconditional acceptance of you as you are. When you enter the temple of prayer, you are blessed beyond measure. For, in entering, you surrender, and in surrendering, you are washed clean of all judgments you make about yourself or others.
In prayer the stilled voice learns to hold its peace,
to listen with the heart to silence that is joy, is
adoration. The self is shattered, all words torn apart
in this strange patterned time of contemplation that,
in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me, and then,
in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
During prayer a new state comes on. A kind of "largesse," an indescribable vastness, so great as to encompass the whole of creation. This immeasurableness simply flows right through me, no resistance from "self-important demands" blocks the flow, a feeling of absolute weightlessness and transparency. The expression "emptied of self" is a living reality.
The highest level of prayer is not a prayer FOR anything. It is a deep and profound silence, in which we allow ourselves to be still and know God. In that silence, we are changed. We are calmed. We are illumined. Prayer is meant to dissolve the worldly focus, to dissolve our sense of a separate self, to help us detach from the noisy world order.
Prayer is like pouring hot water on an ice cube, melting the cold and encrusted thought forms that still surround our hearts.
Those who have lost their way, who are ravaged by addictions and feelings of hopelessness, believe they are alone. They have seemingly lost their soul and need to find a spiritual base. That base is love, which is the only permanent power in the universe. It is the central ingredient in healing and in all harmony. Recognize and realize the power of love and its dominion over all things, and you and others will be restored to a fearless place. Love will supplant the fear.
To be able to love one another, we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If we now have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.
My love
is like the grasses
hidden in the deep mountain:
though its abundance increases,
nobody knows.
You do not make yourself love.
|You allow love to enter.
There is no "out of love." It's what we are, deeper and richer than all the spiritual promises and far more ordinary and real. We don't "fall in or out of love" because we are permanently in the flow of love itself. Love is the way we are meant to live; love is the measure of the meaning of life ... When we touch life with love, it grows warm and shines down the corridors of the mind with a light that does not fade but grows brighter and more beautiful with the years.
When love is present nothing is the same. Even the drab gray walls of this prison begin to glow. It's as if we are transported into a different world, love's world. Then things are seen through love's eyes. Then the pain may turn into a poem, and the sorrow may blossom as a ministry.
Love is what shines from our eyes, beats from our heart, speaks with our voice, and meets itself everywhere. Sooner or later, love will reclaim us all. But to let that happen now, to die into love now, before the body dies ... Ah!
Only when we return to our hearts and look honestly at ourselves can we begin to recognize ourselves, as we were created to be and as we are. Only then can we learn to know and love ourselves, and to love others as we love ourselves.
Let us keep this truth before us.
You say you have no faith?
Love--and faith will come.
You say you are sad?
Love--and joy will come.
You say you are alone?
Love--and you will break out of your solitude.
You say you are in hell?
Love--and you will find yourself in heaven.
Heaven is love.
Drink the wine of Love
and your life will change.
Instead of being a gatherer
of the Divine Light
you will be the shine.
It will be the end of you
and the beginning.