The most important work can be birthed from the place where uncomfortable silence seeps between us. In those
moments we're faced with the decision of whether to respond immediately with the assuredness of our truth or to let the
silence work in us. To feel the sadness and anger and grief. To be reminded
that there's more at work in the story of the other ...
The experience of love is the most fulfilling and important experience we can have, the highest of all values. Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency and indifference to know the reality, the centrality, of love. Without becoming passive, we can stop resisting and submit to Love. We begin to see the ínfinite power of Love as the greatest cause in the universe, and little by little we begin to serve it. Eventually, we begin to see that even a bitter drink is sweet when it is from the Beloved.
It is only when we come to total and unconditional "love" of our own darkness that we can know God incarnate in us, loving and understanding us in our totality. Pascal says that no one can love God without knowing their own misery.
~ from SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON by Helen Luke
One day I stood quietly gazing through our sliding glass doors. It was a windless day, and without thinking, I found myself slipping into a silent world. Then something overcame me. Whereas silence had been a visitor, a friend with whom I communed when I chose, now silence slipped into the core of my being. Without my knowíng, without even my consciousness consent, sílence entered me ín a way a spouse penetrates his espoused. I realized with a shock that this seeking of silence had led to consummation. I was consumed. I was wed — in a way that had no guests, no celebration, no fanfare or music, and no witness. Except my heart.
My dear, for the last ten years Arletta has been coming to see me every Thursday, and when he can't come, he stops in to tell me. We're old friends. I think he likes to talk with me. Do you know, when he found me, I couldn't even walk? Some of my toenaíls were at least three inches long. He came back with fríends. They heated water, cut my toenalls, and rubbed my feet. Look, over there is the basin, all polished and shiny. Do you know hím very well? I wonder what he sees in me. I had begun to believe that no one would ever love me again.
Pure Love is seeking desire, searching through space, through the air, through the ground, seeking fulfillment. On and on it goes until at last awakening in Itself, It finds Its foundation in the heart... God's Love is the One Flood that never recedes, but rises, rises, covering the universe, covering every living atom. The lowest and highest join in one overwhelming desire to give all to Divine Love: Love fulfilling, feeding', giving, opening in every direction — giving without beginning or end; Love, the root of Life.
~ from THE ANGEL OF THE PRESENCE by Elise N. Morgan
When someone has compassion on us, we find ourselves really seen, heard, attended to. If someone's attention is genuinely compassionate, it does not stop at attentiveness: he or she is willing to speak, act, or even suffer with us and for us. It is in such passivity, as we receive their compassion, that the most powerful dynamics of our own feeling and activity are shaped. Amazed gratitude for such compassion can last a lifetime.
