This is what you are to do: Love God. Go to a quiet place. Calm yourself. And with a gentle stirring of love lift your heart up to God, loving God not for any gifts, but instead, love God for God's sake alone. Sitting thus, do not think about the presence of feelings that God is near. Do not cling to any thought of God, regardless of how sublime the thought might be. Do not pray for anyone or for yourself, regardless of the immensity of the need. Let your love for God alone be your sole concern. Of course, you will make mistakes, for, after all, you do not know what you are doing. You do not know how to life up your heart "with a gentle stirring of love." The very simplicity and radicality of what you are led to do leads you into the obscurity of the contemplative way. But no matter, led by God's promptings you learn (without knowing how) to listen to God's gentle stirrings of love within you. As the gentle stirring is meek, so, too, is your lifting up of it to God. As it is unseen, beyond the reach of your power to comprehend it, so, too, is your lifting up of this stirring. As it is fiery and mighty, so, too, your humble self-offering to God, loving God for God's own sake.
To learn how to wait, how to be silent, how to befriend the dark...Thus do we prepare to be creative. There is a waiting, a silence and a darkness in all birthing. Heart's winter is already a filling womb.
Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It
is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that
seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
...it is not the thing itself...that is the problem; but it is our clinging to the thing even
when it causes us, ourselves, and others mental or physical pain, which blinds us to a
bigger view and snowballs into more suffering. Ultimately, the challenge of letting go
becomes a spiritual act in some way: in many
spiritual traditions, surrender is the backbone, as
Mohammed says in the Qur'an, "True religion is
surrender." And so as we grasp at the beautiful red
leaf, we just might let it spin again in the autumn
wind, delighting in that tiny leaf-filled and empty
moment.
~ from HAIKU MIND: 108 POEMS TO CULTIVATE AWARENESS & OPEN YOUR HEART by Patricia Donegan
The cosmos is filled with precious gems.
I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning.
Each moment you are alive is a gem,
shining through and containing Earth and sky,
Water and clouds.
It needs you to breathe gently
for the miracles to be displayed.
Suddenly you hear the birds singing,
the pines chanting...
You, the richest person on Earth,
who have been going around begging,
stop being the destitute child.
Come back and claim your heritage.
Enjoy your happiness
and offer it to everyone.
Cherish this very moment.
Let go of the stream of distress
and embrace life fully in your arms.
I wonder if gratefulness is the
bridge from sorrow to joy,
spanning the chasm of our
anxious striving. Freed from the
burden of unbridled desires, we
can enjoy what we have,
celebrate what we've attained,
and appreciate the familiar. For
if we can't be happy now, we'll
likely not be happy when.
Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin...be not
therefore anxious for the
morrow for the morrow will be
anxious for itself.
When I started the practice of
"no preference," a special
quality of mind began to grow—
a unique understanding and
affirmation of the way things
are— and I discovered something
extraordinary: the heart of
stillness sits perfectly balanced in
the middle of chaos. This is the
true dwelling place of the soul.
~ from ENDURING THE SACRED MOUNTAIN by David A. Cooper
Forgiveness is a complex experience that changes an offended
person's spiritual feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions, and
self-confidence level. I believe learning to forgive the hurts
and grudges of our life may be an important step for us to feel
more hopeful and spiritually connected and less depressed.
