Blessings of the New Year, the beginning of our 17th year of radiating silence out to the world. Let us envision our silences as energetic webs of Light penetrating the darkness as it blankets the globe. And, in the Silence may the Light ever illuminate our souls!
Once when we were walking together, I saw Teilhard fall to his knees just to study a stone. He held it up to the light and ran his fingers carefully over its surfaces, as if he were trying to read the pattern of matter as a language. Watching him that day in the blessed silence of the field, I saw a man who could see light in the very earth under his feet. Because of him I learned not to hate our enemy, and joined with him in the work of serving those who were in need. And sometimes at sunset when the sky was bright with amazing color, I tried to look beyond the trenches — as he did so often — and see the light in this world of ours.
~ from "Interlude: The Stretcher-Bearer" in NAVIGATING THE TIDES OF CHANGE by David La Chapelle
BLESSINGS, dear friends! Welcome to a new season ... a time for letting go like the falling leaves of authumn ... a time to simplify, to pause in the silence of deep prayer and ask for guidance: i.e., "How would You have me best use the days of this season to Serve in your Dream for our world?" Then, listen for a word, Divine Hints that may surprise you ... and, trust, trust that you will live into the answer to your request as you hold the question in your heart.
Silence is making-friends-with-time. It does not fight it or waste it; it refuses to run after it. Silence floats free of time, letting the pattern of the moments unfold at its own pace... In silence we break the hold time has on us, and accept in practice that our true home is in eternity.
It's a curious paradox in this life that change is a constant, dependable, and unchanging fact. But when we try to control the moment by denying what is so, we have lost the moment to the past or the future. Trying to alter the moment steals it from us. If we want fruitful change in our lives, we have to move through each moment, experiencing its wholeness, savoring what it has to offer, noticing where we are stuck, and in the process maintain an intimate contact with our deepest sense of self.
They are not long These days to be But a taste of eternity. In each hour, There is the power Of a Now That stretches timeless In Its core And knows eternity Be not more.
We nee to "slow down to a human tempo" and experience time as it was meant to be experienced. We already live in "the fullness of time," and we must give ourselves a chance to realize that we have what we seek. Our hearts and flesh cry out for the living God, Who IS here, right now, among us if we but receive that Divine Presence. The call to take time to be holy is a call to integrate prayer and life, for they are, in fact, one. The call is to live as if all time were Holy time. So, I rejoice to announce to you, it is!
I stood there dumbfounded by the vast silence. . . And, for one of the many times in my life, thinking, "Robert, what in the name of heaven have you gotten yourself into?" For the first few days, time weighed very heavy on my hands. I found myself constantly looking at my watch. I was suppose to look for fires fifteen minutes out of every hour and phone in a weather report each day at noon, but otherwise I could do as I wished. By the third day, however, something changed. Time was no longer an entity that pressured me. Time became like the flow of a river, and gradually I came into accord with the rest of nature. I was never again bored or lonely that summer. . . Living in the wilderness frees us from the tyranny of time and reveals how different existence was for our ancestors.
~ from BALANCING HEAVEN AND EARTH by Robert A. Johnson
