The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
With each discovery of truth about ourselves, we come to a crossroad on our journey toward God. One path leads to denial and despair . .. the other to holiness.
From the forest branches fading birdsong offered Self-sacrifice to a huge silence. Dark formlessness settled over all diversity Of land and water. As shadows, as particles, my body Fused with endless night. I came to rest At the altar of the stars. Alone, amazed, I stared Upwards with hands clasped and said, "Sun, you have removed Your rays: show now your loveliest, kindlier form That I may see the Person who dwells in me as in you."
We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey. Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union. The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
~ from FRUITS AND GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT by Thomas Keating
A God seeker is a person on a journey. When the thirst has been awakened, we are no longer persons wandering aimlessly about, but persons who have begun to discern the bare outlines of a path. We become more than wanderers. It is a journey based upon the assumption that there is more to life than meets the eye.
There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through, passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed behind the facade of the common.
~ from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE by Marv and Nancy Hiles
There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path. You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone. You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
Warm greetings, dear friends of silence! We are having most unsettled weather here in Missouri in recent weeks, and in some ways it reflects what we must all feel at times in our lives. You know the feeling: scattered, as though we were being pulled in too many directions at once and feeling too many claims on our time. At such times, we may feel particularly unsettled and badly in need of healing, being knit back together into a calm serenity. "Healing" can have many meanings, of course. We think first of being cured of a disease, but there is a deeper and more holistic meaning of the word, too. When we sink into the depths of ourselves in sacred silence, we find what we need to be truly healed, in ways our conscious minds may have not yet perceived. May we experience the healing we need, in whatever form that may take, as we enter the silence together.
To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing, and then one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed. To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another.
