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."
I love Jesus, who said to us:
heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will still remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were
one word: Wakeup.
~ Antonio Machado from "Proverbs and Tiny Songs " in THE SOUL IS HERE FOR ITS OWN JOY
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
When we hear the sounds of the Earth crying within us, we're unblocking the channels of felt connectedness that join us to the world. These channels act like a system, opening us up to a source of strength and resilience.
Sadly, because our culture has devalued the feminine, we have repressed so much of her nature, so many of her qualities. Instead we live primarily masculine values; we are goal-oriented, competitive, driven. Masculine values even dominate our spiritual quest; we seek to be better, to improve ourselves, to get somewhere. We have forgotten the feminine qualities of waiting, listening, being empty. We have dismissed the deep need of the soul, our longing, the feminine side of love.
You come to see that suffering is required; and you no more want to avoid it than you want to avoid putting your next foot on the ground when you are walking. In the spiritual path, joy and suffering follow one another like the two feet and you come to a point of not minding which 'foot' is on the ground. You realize on the contrary that it is extremely uncomfortable hopping all the time on the joy foot.
