"What begins in a search through nothingness for God and for meaning ends in friendship. In our surrender we come to know God as friend: 'I shall not call you servants anymore ... I call you friends.' Without friendships something is dead within us. Just as a healthy openness, frankness, sincerity and an attitude of respect are fundamental as a foundation for prayer, these qualities are also developed in friendship. For deep friendship brings an empathetic knowledge of the other, an understanding that comes from love and compassion.
Friends grow together ... challenge each other. Friends have the power to draw the best out of us. To have formed a few very deep friendships is the blessing of a lifetime. Silence offers us the luxury of deepening our friendship with God ... of knowing how dearly we are loved by God. The Beloved will speak to us within our self-understanding, love us within our self-acceptance and celebrate with us when we celebrate with our friends."
The journey toward our beauty is a magnificent struggle. Achieving an integrity between what we believe and how we live is a challenge worthy of the gift of life. A thousand obstacles stand between ourselves and the honoring of our truth. A thousand distractions. (A thousand ego-generated delusions). To dive down, find the beauty, nurture it and offer it to the world is magnificent. Staying with your beauty, your truth, your integrity is difficult, but out of these things comes meaning, and meaning is all-transcendent.
~ from JOURNAL NOTES by Rod McIver ... "Heron Dance" #19
Beauty is luminous radiance. Beauty is lucent, mystical essence, he face that is unforgettably lovely, the dance with the exquisite movements that our minds cannot erase, the music whose notes repeat themselves endlessly in our hearts. Beauty infuses; beauty enthralls; beauty inspires and illumines; beauty lifts up and enlivens our souls.
Life is a spiral, slowly moving through the seasons and cycles o four lives. If we are balanced in our actions, creating beauty and harmony within our spiral, we are following the path of right action, the path we strive to follow... To balance the spiral we must participate in our becoming well. We must learn not to be judgmental, not to be dragged down by grief, anger and negativity, forgetting the joy, passion, generosity and kindness of life. Beauty is no threat to the wary. You can walk in beauty and still sack groceries or change diapers...
Beyond finite beauty — the beauty that we see — is a depth of infinite beauty from which all created beauty comes, and to which it must return to find its fulfillment. This is the light in which all works of art must be immersed, if they are to touch the depths of all being and of all hearts.
God is at the deep center of all things; there we find eternal life. Every creature gifted with reason has received light to see in all created things both their own individual beauty and that of the Supreme Being, from whom they have received their being, and who sustains them in it. With the light given us we can see God in all things and come into harmony.
BLESSINGS and WARM WISHES to ech FOS around the world! How deeply we long to love and to be loved by the unknown Mystery! May we each afirm Divine Love in the silence of our own hearts, in the anctuary of our Inner Chapel, and in the freedom of solitude. May we bask in this LOE and raiate LOVE out to the world trusing it will make a difference to someone, somewhere.
The important thing is to allow love into one's life, to turn towards it. Then, if one love dies, another will take its place — whether human or Divine in form. As my friend, Annabella, once said, "I have passed my whole life being in love, in love with nature, in love with animals, in love with life, and I celebrate each springtime as a miracle." When we build a relationship, the ACT of turning the heart towards the beloved, with recognition, waters the root of love. Then one an receive its fruits: peace, joy, silence, contentment.
~ from THE VOICE OF SILENCE by Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo
Heaven will not leave us alone. Heaven will continue to come to earth Until heaven and earth are one. Heaven will not leave us alone until Love's work is done.
