The rooting (of trees, of our selves) is as important and as necessary as the rising. We have the opportunity to sink roots into soul and rise up with branches in heaven...
Our spiritual growth is meant to go in both directions, toward the fertile darkness and the glorious light, each of us having the opportunity to bridge earth and heaven—the underworld and the upperworld—through the trunks of our middleworld lives....
There's no conflict between spirit-centered being and soulful doing, between transcendence and inscendence. Each supports and enhances the other. Like Rilke, we discover we can have both:
You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all;
The darkness of each endless fall,
The shimmering light of each ascent.
All things are possible to those who believe, yet more to those who hope, more still to those who love, and most of all to those who practice and persevere in these three virtues.
~ from PRACTICING THE PRESENCE by Brother Lawrence
True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.
Hope is the source and spring of all the alchemies of transformation, the greatest treasure of the heart and mind, the philosopher’s stone that transmutes agony and tragedy into new life. Never abandon hope, or you abandon your closest and most helpful guide, the Friend.
I heard a preacher say that hope is a revolutionary practice . . . hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. . .
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope within or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
Hope is an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is.
~ Vaclav Havel in “Share International” #3, Vol. 25
So in the end I am left only with hope. I hope the nights are transformative. I hope every dawn brings deeper love, for each of us individually and for the world as a whole. I hope that John of the Cross was right when he said the intellect is transformed into faith, and the will into love and the memory into—hope.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Heartfelt good wishes, dear friends! Creation ... Creator ... Creativity. We are all born into Creation to become co-creators with the Great Architect of all Life. Moment by moment, creativity flows through us, inviting us to create and re-create our own lives into Love being expressed. Silence is like a river that keeps our "creative juices" flowing. At each new dawn throughout eternity, the world is made new. And so it is with us; how we choose to live, think, and act becomes the blueprint of our own creation. Wherever we are, whatever our age and circumstance ... creation continues.
