Seek refuge in inner silence,
free your thoughts from
the external world and you will feel
the rays of God's goodness and love
pouring over you and the universe.
Seek refuge in inner silence,
free your thoughts from
the external world and you will feel
the rays of God's goodness and love
pouring over you and the universe.
If you would but practice loving, you would make yourself into a fountain of healing energy where others could drink the balm that heals the pain of the soul. For it is love, only love, that can heal all levels of the human being. Remember also that the earth being needs your love. Not only is the earth a living, thinking, feeling entity like yourself, but she needs the love and the thoughts of the human race in these dark years as she has never before needed anything. You can be among the growing number who realize the mother planet is suffering. In your prayers, and in your meditation, send her your love and your thoughts. The darkness of her days can be lifted by the love of the race she has nurtured since its inception.
Love matters. It matters more than anything else in the world. Yet is is very easy. All you have to do is be who you really are; for you are made of love and made to love because of what you are: an interconnected part of a whole whose life and fiber is love.
Love is our shared truth.
Peace is our eternal hope.
How many people can you love
before it's too much, she said.
and I said I didn't think
there was any real limit
as long as you didn't care
if they loved you back.
Encircle me
Enfold me
Entrance me
With Thy peace
That I may pray
and love Thee well.
Encircle me
Embolden me
Enhance me
With Thy power
That I may ever
do Thy will.
Love has given humans very real gifts. The chief one is the divine indwelling, God's own presence within us, sustaining us by this creative action and embracing us, or trying to heal or transform us through the redeeming love that is distinctively motherly. As the spiritual journey progresses, one comes face to face with the divine presence.
Both of our families had ben crippled to some degree by prejudice, personal trauma, and tragedy, but in the most important ways both ranches had endured. So it wasn't what we did for a living that counted, nor what kind of china we dined on, nor what our houses looked like. Nor, in this one sense, did our skin color even matter very much. What counted most through the generations far more than any other factor, was how we treated those we loved and how well we loved That seemed the transcendent lesson or moral my search had revealed
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God. It is in everybody and if we could see it we would see those billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun.
The oak tree in full foliage praises the Creator, but in order to become the oak tree, the acorn has to open in the dark. Its roots have to reach deep into the earth as its branches stretch toward the light. There in the dark the shell has to crack. Only when I let go of my protective shell, when I find the crack makes me vulnerable, that opens me to the Other, only then will the night be radiant, only then will the dark be light... The spark is in everyone's soul: the spark of our Creator shining in the dark. This spark is ours to tend, to take care of until it flares into a brilliant flame, lit by God.
I said to the one who stood at the Gate of the Year,
Give me a light that I might go safely out into the darkness.
The gatekeeper replied,
Go out into the darkness and put your hand
into the hand of God.
That shall be more to you than a light and safer than a known way.
The light of splendor shines in the middle of the night. Who can see it? A heart which has eyes and watches.
Fountain of Light: from that light flows the light that is essential for the very existence of life, and the light of understanding in which the point of life, its meaning, its purpose and direction, can, within our limited capacity, be grasped. Divine light, not artificial, not intermittent, seasonal, or subject to power cuts. But issuing from God as from a fountain ceaselessly playing, springing up endlessly and joyously, irradiating the uttermost parts of the universe, suffusing the darkest corners of the human heart.
There is a place in everyone that can carry the light. God has made it this way. God has not only given us the chance to carry the light, but has made it possible for us to kindle and strengthen the light in one another, passing the light along. This way God's light will shine forever in this world.
The Light that flows through your system is Universal Energy. It is the Light of the Universe. You give Light form. What you feel, what you think, how you behave, what you value and how you live your life reflect the way you are shaping the Light that is flowing through you. They are thought forms, the feeling forms and the outer forms that you have given to Light. They reflect the configuration of your personality, your space-time being.
Throughout my whole life, during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batfly,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
The light that shines in the eye
is really the light of the heart.
The light that fills the heart
is the light of God, which is pure
and separate from the light of
intellect and senses.
I wish I could show you
when you are lonely or in darkness
the astonishing
light of your own being.
The ancient hieroglyph for adoration is a gesture of opening that signified both the receipt of divine grace and the offering of the self. When a man or woman stands before God with arms opened wide, the heart is vulnerable to penetration. We allow God to slay us, to kill that which is "other" in us, then to enter and inhabit our form in order for God to know the Divine through us, to resurrect and reconstruct us as changed creatures, as bodies more fully filled with the Light of God.
Before the restoration, it was the colors I watched, blue, red, yellow, green, pink; the architecture, the meadow, the hedges, the water. Now, what I see is light. White light. Color has been absorbed into form, Form is in the service of surprise. It is the light, the throbbing illumination, glowing on the horizon, rippling in the waters, blowing through the grasses, that touches my lips. Something has been set in MOTION.
I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I was not light myself, I knew that, but I bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel the light rising, spreading, giving form. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from the outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness . The seeing eye was in me.
Once when we were walking together, I saw Teilhard fall to his knees just to study a stone. He held it up to the light and ran his fingers carefully over its surfaces, as if he were trying to read the pattern of matter as a language. Watching him that day in the blessed silence of the field, I saw a man who could see light in the very earth under his feet. Because of him I learned not to hate our enemy, and joined with him in the work of serving those who were in need. And sometimes at sunset when the sky was bright with amazing color, I tried to look beyond the trenches — as he did so often — and see the light in this world of ours.
When we call upon angels to be with us, we tap into an infinite resource of good will. It is as if we plug into the magnetic core of the earth to keep ourselves centered. Archangels represent the God-center of the universe; they draw nourishment from Its infinite supply. The only impediments to connecting with this energy are doubt and cynicism. If we can recognize these as they arise in our minds and find appropriate cubby holes in which to keep them in reserve for the times when they are useful, we can instantly benefit from the sense of angelic presence.
Angels show their love for God through their service of other creatures, just as we are enjoined to show our love for God by serving one another. Angels make God's goodness concrete, both in this life and in the life to come.
Many people have shared stories about divine encounters with angels in which they received profound guidance, comfort, or instructions on how to proceed with their lives. And many people describe angelic interventions in which they are given a warning about something or someone in their lives . . . Without a doubt we are surrounded by our angels, invisible beings of light who guide us through the mysteries of our lives.
There is a church in Umbria, Little Portion, already old eight hundred years ago. Abandoned and in disrepair, it was called St. Mary of the Angels, for it was known to be the haunt of angels. Often at night the country people could hear angels singing there.
What was it like, to listen to the angels, to hear those mountain-fresh, those simple voices, poured out of the bare stones of Little Portion in hymns of joy? No one has told us. Perhaps its needs another language that we have still to learn, an altogether different language.
I didn't know what courage was until I met Harriet Tubman. And I'm telling you I studied hard something fierce 'cause I wanted to know the source of that courage. I asked her once and she said, "It ain't me. It couldn't be. I've got a guardian angel, that's what I have. They come when you think of others more'n yourself. They come like bees to honey."
In everything we do, in every aspect of our lives, in our thinking and our feelings, all areas, we need to infuse those areas with the Light of God. If we do that, we will experience a wonderful sense of joy. This quality is valued by the angels because it is so very special when humanity uses its free will to replace the energy of darkness with the Light of God, especially out of love. Each time a person does this in his or her own life, it is cause for the angels to rejoice.
To love for the sake of being loved is human,
yet to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
The Angels keep their ancient places
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis ye, your estranged faces
That miss the many-splendored thing.
Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you. Invoke them often and trust in their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs.
Our guardian angels will be present during the time when our souls will exit this world and abandon the material body. They will be there at the moment to offer us solace and support during that transition and then help us adjust to the realms of the spirits when our soul will be directed toward God. It will be at that point that the soul will become conscious of its eternal condition.
According to a Talmudic legend, an angel escorts the soul from its abode in heaven into the tomb and there unites it to the embryo. The angel tutors the new being in the mysteries of the world, transporting it to heaven and darkness to see the heights and depths of creation, revealing to it the ways of beauty, truth, and goodness, disclosing the potential of its future life on earth, even to the time and place of death. As the child matures within the womb, it ponders the wonders it has seen. Then, at the instant of birth, the angel touches the child on the mouth, erasing all memory of these marvelous revelations.
When the angels touch our hearts and "kiss our minds," We are forever changed. Our wonder in being human comes back strong with angelic guidance. The magic of nature, the mythic quality of being human, the pain of the soul, the soaring of the spirit, the beauty of compassion, and the grace of reverence all come together, weaving life into a meaningful experience.
Her 1ife, which had been a series of pious works, had cloaked her in a kind of transparent whiteness. And in growing old she had acquired a kind of beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth, was in her maturity a transparency, and this ethereal quality permitted glimmers of the angel dancing within.
What remain constant in every account of angels, from ancient days to the present, is that they are both messengers and companions to humans, sent from a realm beyond usual seeing. Angels appear, and in one way or another, help us, advise us, inspire us, or amaze us.
The love of the angels be to you --
To guard you and cherish you.
CALCUTTA: A beggar, half-conscious, is lying on a mat in a home for the dying. A nun is kneeling by his side, her delicate fingers wiping his forehead with a washcloth. She is a peasant whose eyes shine like the wings of a heron flying around the sun, a silence whose light soars through the darkness.
How can I describe the beggar's eyes as he summons all his strength to motion her to draw close? She obeys.
It takes the beggar a long time to whisper something in her ears: "I have lived . . . like an animal. Now I will die . . . like an angel." The beggar's final words.
We are all joined in the holiness of the mind that God created. I therefore never consider myself one in the silence. I'm 88 and live alone in a four room house surrounded by open space. I have no TV and have always luxuriated in silence. The exterior silence is here. The interior silence is a work in progress.
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your Name.