The Bishop's day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Still the day was not complete if cold or wet weather prevented him from spending an hour or two in the garden before going to bed... He was alone with himself, collected. Peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with that of the Other, affected in the darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God... Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed at it. He did not study God: he was dazzled (by God).
Prayer is that divine seed whose roots draw food from earthly existence. Like the lotus flower that does not bloom in arable ground but in marshes, prayer thrusts its roots into human misery as if into mud. But the lotus flower does not show any trace of the muddy water from which it drew life; turned toward the sky, it blooms.
~ from AWAKENING TO PRAYER by Augustine Ichiro Okumura
"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?"
When we are at home in the garden, tending and nurturing all its plants, animals, and minerals, living with them through all the seasons and days, then healing comes upon us like a gift and makes us whole.
As Jacob Boehme puts it, "I am a string in the concert of God’s joy."... We need to experience our own personal aliveness as part of that greater cosmic aliveness...When I become "a string in the concert of God’s joy," I am "sounded through" by the music, and in that sounding, in harmonic resonance with all the other instruments, is revealed both my irreplaceable uniqueness and my inescapable belonging.
~ from THE WISDOM WAY OF KNOWING by Cynthia Bourgeault
We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to find that enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in that dance, and in that song, the most ancient rites of our conscience fulfill themselves in the awareness of being human.
~ from "Letters of Solitude" in The Spirit of the Earth v. 5, no. 2
