Soul requirements casll for silence,
sacred time alone in heart space and stillness.
A balanced life, engenders harmony of gody,
mind, emotions, and soul
in work, prayer, and recreation in the outer world;
re-creation in silence and solitude,
inwardly at home with Divine Love.
Let Wisdom teach and illuminate the way!
Cherish your times in sacred space
with silence and solitude.
The sacred is within our hearts.
It is ours whenever and wherever we are.
Sacred sites teach us this --
the redemption of our sanctity.
Steeping ourselves in a place, simmering in its bounties, celebrating its wonders, and loving its peculiarities are necessary steps on a spiritual journey. We often take for granted the places where we work and play. To get to know them again, or perhaps for the first time, involves acts of consecration and imagination. Or as Wendell Berry puts it: "My most inspiring thought is that this place, if I am to live well in it, requires and deserves a lifetime of the most careful attention."
The sacred landscape is a window into the other worlds. It is a place where beings encounter each other, and meet themselves. Be open. If you see something, pay attention!
The heart is the hub of all sacred places.
Go there and roam in it.
Landscape is more than flat land covered by floodwater, the seeping of peat bogs, a river of liquid pewter viewed from a tower. It's an influence on what a person values, what she is willing to sacrifice or argue for. The interior landscape of a soul is, in part, a reflection of the exterior landscape.
After one hundred days of confinement following a bone marrow transplant, I rejoiced in taking short walks to a nearby park. The uncertainty of my survival made every blade of grass gorgeous in its green intensity, lifting itself up, doing its part to make the world more beautiful. Every breeze touching my neck was a gift, revitalizing me. I looked a the world tenderly, intensely, gratefully.
Which of these tow powers, love or music, can elevate us to the sublimest heights? Why separate them? They are the two wings of the soul.
Every soul is born out of silence, dies back into silence and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence allows the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every word. The Unmanifested is present in the world as silence. Thnis is why it has b een said that nothing in this world is so like God as silence.
That which cannot be expressed otherwise can only be told through music. A thought, which seems common place in its analysis, acquires a depper sense in music.
We can think of ourselves as musical instruments that imprint the world in a unique way. Our body is the instrument, our nerves are the strings, and the musician is our spirit. When in a music store, if yuou pluck a string on a guitar, all the other guitars in the room will vibrate to that tone. What type of music are you making?
The monk made the bamboo come alive, capturing the sounfds of the universe and bringing them into the room. Long, deep, haunting tones vibrated in my chest. The notest demanded introspection. The noise of the rain somehow accentuated the silence between each phrase, adding an inconceivable dimension to the music.
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips.
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sun to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow.
As I passed the tall spruce, it suddenly came alive with song. Startled, I stopped to listedn. Deep inside the thickly branched tree the sparrows had been awakened by some inner alarm clock and began heralding tghe dawn with their symphony cheeps, quickly filling the gray day with the sparkle of their voices. I stood there amazed, my heart transformed. A smile came as I pondered that usually silent tree now filled with hidden music.
Don't we all need a tree full of sparrow cheeps to lift our hearts into hope and to remind us of the surprising beauty of life!
How many songs I have I cannot tell you. I keep no count of such things. There are so manyu occasions in one's life when a joy or a sorrow is felt in suich a way tthat the desire comes to sing; and so I only know that I have many songs. All my being is song, and I sing as I draw breath.... It is just a necfessary for me to sing as it is to breath.
What can soothe the soul as much as the grace of music? Music allows us to express and deal with our feelings constructively, lifting them to a new place, a new level of integration. The enchantment of music helps free the soul to sing, and its energy becomes an infectious catalyst to change. On the wings of a beautiful melody, suddenly we feel different, ready to move forward.
By now, every thermometer I have has burst at temperatures over 130 degrees. The abbot of the monastery suggested I make a journey up to a cave in the mountains with an elderly monk as guide. We had to walk barefoot as we were walking on holy ground. Under my breath I muttered and grumbled. The monk was well aware of me, and as I began to listen to what he was murmuring, I discovered it was melodic. He was actually singing a song of praise for the wonder and beauty of the day as I was accursing!
On a sould discovery journey in the desert, our group included Miguel Gruntlein, who had studied the Peruvian flute. Early each morning I would hear Miguel somehwere near the camp playing the most serene song to gree the dawn with the same haunting tune; as we moved camp, the tune changed. When asked, Miguel said he was playing the songs of the canyon. Each place has its own song and reflects a unique facet of his soul that comes alive in the particular wild place he visits, a conversation between Miguel and the wild.
Become more and more acquainted with your body on all its subtle levels, the fine vibrations which really are music, because when we talk of things created, they are only vibrations, nothing else, energy in movement and matter. In poetic language we can say the world is created by music. As we are the world, the universe, all the music of the universe is in our body.
O music, in your depths we deposit our hearts and souls. Thou hast taught us to see with our ears and hear with our hearts.
The voice of the solar wind -- aptly named "chorus" -- is both ethereal and haunting. You can hear echoes of crickets and snatches of whole song in this celestial starry music that bathes our planet. Everything is in vibratory relationship with everything else.
From the "strings" to the fluctuating pulses of cosmic radiationb that attend the expansion of the universe, there is a song that sounds through the fabric of our physical universe. The music of life is heard everywhere. It is we who fail to hear the music.
I felt a firm conviction of the unity, the Oneness, of all life, a kinship with all living things, even to the invisible busy atom, a sense that we were made of the same stuff and moved to the same patterns, from the atoms to the universes, the macrocosm repeating the microcosm, that love and truth and goodness in a single life were interpenetrated by the infinite love and truth and goodness we call God.
Let uis prove to the whole world that we are one,
let us be one in love to the poorest of the poor.
What seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. For the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels. It's for us to perceive the warp and woof of the Oneness of All as best we can and learn to follow our own threads through the tapestry of life with authenticity and resolve.
We are One with all life that is in nature.
We can no longer live for ourselves alone.
If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. It doesn't even stop with human beings and enemies of the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. EVERYTHING becomes enchanting with true sight.
One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love.All we can do is to participate.
It is commonly considered rude to keep silent in the company of others, but voluntary silence connects rather than distances us from others whose individual differences temporarily fade away creating a shared feeling of harmony and oneness.
I think You, my God, for having in a thousand diffeent ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings You implanted in me as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo; through all these, I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made One.
When all things return to One, even gold loses its value. But when the One returns to all things, even the pebbles sparkle.
May I dance body and mind into You
and be changed.
Embedded in your close Presence
all is holy, all is interconnected, all is One.
Some Thing that moves among the stars,
And holds the cosmos in a web of law,
Moves too in me: a hunger, a quick thaw
Of soul, that liquifies the ancient bars,
As I, a member of creation, sing
The burning oneness binding everything.
O Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
O Hidden Light, shining in every creature,
O Hidden Love, embracing all in Oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with Thee
Know they are therefore one with every other.
The exerience of Oneness is not limited to just the great mystics of all the ages. Each one of us is invited to experience this Oneness and we can do so in all our endeavors. We can experience and utilize our Oneness when we are appreciating the beauty of nature, in our spiritual practice, in the creative process, and in our social action in the world. When we are feeling separate from our God source, we can find deep within us that knowing of Oneness to guide us back into the Light.
This is true faith: connection to the universe and its inner divine consciousness through freedom, individual uniqueness, regard for one's true personality, grounding of the divine within, all expressed through love. It saves, for it makes us one with that which endures and can never be lost. It gives peace, for it brings the gift of Oneness. We are only upset by that which is outside ourselves and threatens to come in and destroy, or by the reflection of the intruder within. If we truly know we are One with all that is, nothing is outside us, nothing can threaten, so there can only be peace.
There is an interconnectedness, a oneness, an interrelationship of all life. We are not separate, isolated beings, but are all part of the great mystery of creation.
It is interesting to note that modern scientific thinking in many ways points to a similar underwstanding. An example of this is Bell's Theorem, which is sometimes referred to as the "butterfly effect."
It holds that the beating of a butterfly's wings can have an influence on events far away, even on the other side of the Earth.
There is a part of the sun in the apple,
Part of the moon in the rose
Part of the flaming Pleiades
In everything that grows.
Out of the vast comes nearness.
for the God of Love, of which we sing,
Has put a little bit of Heaven
In every living thing.
In praise of redwoods, ancient trees:
I think that could the weary world but know
Communion with these spirits breathing peace
Strangely a veil would lift, a light would glow,
And the dark tumult of our lives would cease.
So many seasons have come and gone and these tall, majestic tress have waited, waited for someone to linger just a moment -- long enough to hear the word they speak, grasp their wonder and beauty, perfect symmetry of trunk and branch -- revealing their essence to the one who has eyes to see and the heart to share a joyful moment with another.
It would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the World, that they were better studied and known in the Creation nof it. For how could humankind find the Confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof?
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all naturala things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
When we are in tune, we are conscious of spirit activating us and we welcome this alignment of our own little rhythm with the great rhythm of the Universe. Then we naturally feel refverence for all life and want to care for our Earth home. We desire simplicity. With joy we dance in the ecstasy of attunement. And we are led in the steps of the dance to offer our loving service to the world.
God is everywhere. The animals and flowers all manifest God's presence, as does the marvelous ecological balance we're becoming more aware of in recent times. Everything seems to work together over time to produce a certain consciousness of God's presence.
The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating. As I watched it sink, I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I though as I sat there, "Be still and know I am God," and knew that without stillness there can be not knowing, we cannot know what spirit means.
O, You who are ever
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
luminous, wonderfulo,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.
The sacred waterfall of tahe Shuar people of Ecuador is breathtaking and beautiful. Yet standing before it, looking up into the rainbow that arches through the cascading waters, the visitor is struck by a feeling that transcends the magnificence of the landscape. No matter what your religion, you cannot help but sense the spirit of this place. Its power defies any attempt to describe the euphoria by a natural phenomenon so overwhelmingly grand that its voice seems to cross all the bridges of time.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a human soul.
Old trees hold us to the earth by their deep roots. And trees are ourmemories, like the blueprints of our planet's history. When ancient trees are cut, the earth loses its memory.
Our forests, those brave and sheltering Standing People, need their ancient forests, just as we humans need to be firmly rooted to our past generations, the grandparents who hold down our family tree.
What we believe in anguish and doubt
the iris proclaims in simple blue tones;
What we do not see, the chickadee confirms
in its flight to the feeder;
Life, life everywhere, sacred everywhere.
There is a sensuality to nature as well as an asceticism; there are teachings on birth and death. Nature is nurturing, education, challenging ... a profound place of presence, of passivity and activity, giving and receiving. Pure contemplation is a direct route to God, and nature can provide an extraordinary context where that graced moment of being Unified can happen.
We create gardens because we are called to be co-creators with the Great Architect, designers of places to fulfill the human quest for wholeness and well-being.... Here in the garden the small voice of God can be heard as we stop to listen.