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.
The seed of prayer is sown in heaven.
It pushes its stem toward the earth
and comes to grow there.
It produces an abundance of fruit.
Then, as it becomes seed once more,
it thrusts its way back to heaven.
To pray is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming set on fire by the Spirit.
For those who have come to know God,
the whole world is a prayer mat.
We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. God is the center, the Source, toward which all forces tend, and we are the flowing, the ebb and flow of God's tides. Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the world in the mirror of the holy.
The creative act is a courageous, ancient gesture, a dynamic prayerful exploration of the dark mystery that is human existence. When I finally identified this face of creativity as sacred practice, I built a small altar in my studio and my work took on a depth of meaning it never had. Prayer and art suddenly meshed and became refined. It wasn't done in pursuit of holiness as I'd been taught in the child's corner of my life. Prayer became synonomous with art as an authentic expression of my entire complex Self.
The most perfectr prayer breathes in a heart that remains silent before God and knows how to listen to God.
The purpose of prayer is to find God's will and to make that will our own.
The last time I saw Fr. Bede, I asked for his blessing and one final word of advice.
He held my face in his hands and then said, "Pray, pray always!"
And he went back to his prayers.
I am giving Thee worship with my whole life,
I am giving Thee assent with my whole power,
I am giving Thee praise with my whole tongue,
I am giving Thee honor with my whole utterance.
I am giving Thee lovfe with my whole devotion,
I am giving Thee kneeling with my whole desire,
I am giving Thee affefction with my whole sense,
I am giving Thee my existence with my whole mind.
I am giving Thee my soul, O God of all ages.
Prayer creates a quiet place within us where we can go at any time regardless of what is taking place around us. In this quiet place, we are constantly aware of God's presence. By practicing self-restraint in speech and maintaining this quiet place within, we will be aware of the presence of God. Then when we do speak, our words will break down the barriers between this world and the next. Words are the tools of the material world, while silence is the mystery of the spiritual realm. A love of silence is the surest and safest way to find our true selves, fulfillment and joy.
Be constant in your practice, and one day the One who gave you the desire for the prayer of the heart will give you that prayer itself. When your heart's intention is fixed on God, it will keep lit the incense of your prayer, and wind of distraction will not put it out. do not worry about stray thoughts; they may come and go, but they will not take your attention away from God.
Prayer invites us to become aware of the living interaction between the transparent God, who will remain always beyond all we can think or imagine, and the immanent God, who abides deep in our heart. As we become aware of this sacred encounter, we become, ourselves, a place where God's dream is becoming incarnate in our own personal life. We enter into a personal and intimate relationship with the Author of our being.
We often consider prayer a deliberate act, something that we choose to do, or not. In the 18th century, William Law knew better:
"As the heart willeth and worketh, such, and no other, is its prayer.... For this is the necessity of our nature: pray we must, as sure as our heart is alive; therefore, when the state of our heart is not a spirit of prayer to God, we pray without ceasing to some, or other, part of the creation."
Perhaps as we learn what "part of creation" we have been praying to without knowing it, we can enlarge and re-focus our prayer, until we find that we are not so much praying as being prayed through, and all our own best hopes and the hopes of the world are flowing through us.
Love flows through all life and it spins the heart. The spinnin gof the heart takes us beyond the limited vision of the mind into the vaster dimensions of our real being. Love awakens us, frees us from the prison of our ego-self, and it can also awaken the world. When the web of life starts to spin with the frequency of the conscious love and of oneness, the world can begin to awaken to its real nature.
You know, O my God, I have never desired anything but to love You, I am ambitious for no other glory. Your love has gone before me, and it has grown with me, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom. Love attracts love and my love leaps toward yours; it would like to fill the abyss which attracts it, but alas; it is not even a drop of dew lost in the ocean! For me to love You as You love me, I would have to borrow your own Love.
Agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. When we rise to love on the Agape level, we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed the person does.
The clear bead at the center changes everything,
There are no edges to my loving now,
I've heard it said that there's a window that
opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall, there's no need for fitting
the window or the latch.
Ah, the heart's a wonder, stronger than the guns of thunder! Even when we're torn asunder, love will come again.
God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.
If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
Love is my chosen food, my cup
holding me in its power.
Where I have come from,
Where'er I shall go,
Love is my birthright,
my true estate.
As the different streams
Having sources in different places
All mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Love,
Thy different paths which people take,
Through various tendencies,
Various though they appear
Crooked or straight,
All eventually lead to Thee.
A paradox: To those who really love, the more they give, the more they possess.
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
Love is the motivation behind every yearning.... In all of life, Love is seeking to discover itself. We com einto this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.
As we move through life, many situations occur and many relationships are offered to us. Each one offers an opportunity to choose fear or to choose love. If we choose love, we bless ourselves and others. If we choose fear, we cry out for love from all our woundedness. Every apparent attack is a call for love.,
Love is active wherever it exists.
Love is everyone's vocation.
The day came when I was able to see Mrs. Tweedie. I was starving for spiritual nourishmnet, for practices beyond this everyday chaos. I had so little time to meditate and I thought I would be given something I could take home with me, a special practice so I could come close to the Beloved.
And she said to me with such love,
"You don't need practices. Love your children and your husband; this is your practice. If you wash your children, remember you're washing the Beloved. If you love your husband, remember that you love the Beloved.
Anmd that has been my main practice for years.
Vocation to solitude: To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, to entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who an belong completely to silence, let it soak into their bones, breathe nothing but silence, feed on silence, and turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. [Yet each of us is blessed when we offer our silence to the world as we can.]
A state of being alone, of inwardly directed consciousness, solitude is not necessarily physical isolation. In solitude, a person claims value for one's self as a free being. The value found in turning inward is the value of self-determination and responsibility. We find self-worth in solitude, in the core of our freedom. Solitude is necessary for spiritual and professional growth; solitude gives us the ability to face ourselves, others, and God.
Let nothing disturb thee,
nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth,
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.