We are divine but imperfect beings who exist in two worlds, material and spiritual. Knowing we have a home of everlasting love waiting for us, makes us receptive to the higher spiritual power within our minds... The highest forms of self-expression are acts of kindness. Our soul may be traveling away from a permanent home, but we are not just tourists. We bear responsibility in the evolution of a higher consciousness for ourselves and others in life. Thus, our journey is a collective one.
We are not yet what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it;
the process is not yet finished,
but it is going on;
this is not the end,
but it is the road.
The spiritual journey is an expanding awareness of the Divine as all in all, vividly and actually present in all external reality, without dualistic separations. Here is the simple truth I keep trying to own, the one that breaks the bounds of beauty: everything is in God, and God is in everything. Think of it. There is no separation, no conflict, no obstruction between the world and the Divine. All that exists is penetrated with divinity. Creation, matter, our bodies -- everything is a vast incarnation or manifestation of Real Presence.
~ from "Silence in the Midst of Noise" by Sue Monk Kidd given at the Schola Retreat Conference
Wishing each friend A BLESSED SUMMER! Through pauses in the Silence, may you remain aware of the Sacred Journey to wholeness wherever you are, wherever you travel. May you invite times of quiet relaxtion and re-creation into your life. As Frederick Franck reminds us in The Zen of Seeing, "In this twentieth century, to stop rushing around, to sit quietly on the grass, to switch off the world and come back to the earth, to allow the eye to see a willow, a bush, a cloud, a leaf, is an unforgettable experience".
Do you know how to make God laugh?
Tell God your plans. The journey of life
is the journey of walking into your mystery,
and, not getting there before God does.
For, there is a Mystery that many call God, manifesting as Universal Love, a set of Laws and a Great Process. That Process works through each and all of us, and that Process is perfect. As we discover this fundamental truth in the journey of our loves, we find that wherever we step, the path appears beneath our feet.
However I may be asked to be with a person, always I am tending to the birth of the sacred, to the mystery -- to the inbreaking of God in this time and space in this person's life. That experience is always new, always precious -- like any birth.
Delight is a mystery. And the mystery is this: to plunge boldly into the brilliance and immediacy of living, at the same time as utterly surrendering to that which lies beyond space and time; to see life translucently ...
~ from THE SAVAGE AND BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY by Alan McGlashan
