Cultivating gratitude opens us to allurement, strengthens our trust, and expands our compassion. Gratitude
manifests in the midst of our everyday living when we pause to take account of how much we have been given. We are present to the wonder of the simplest gifts: a glass of water, a spoonful of food, a breath of air. At such times our hearts are full.
~ Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow in "EarthLight," Summer, 2001
Nature is a sacred space that has the power to draw us out of our small mind into the one Big Mind of God. During warm weather, praying and meditating outside in nature can naturally enhance your practice. You can pray anywhere, even on the subway, but whenever you find yourself in a place that feels sacred, you have already made the connection with God.
Our first home was in the womb of our earthly mother, but the womb of God is our "forever" home. It is a place in which we can live both now and forever--an "at home" place of rest. In the womb of God we can both be and be born, over and over again--constantly birthed into new being: new hope, renewed faith, and forgiving love.
Even as the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nesting place, where its young are raised within your majestic creation, You invite us to dwell within your Heart. Blessed are they whose hearts are filled with love...
They go from strength to strength and live with integrity.
In the beginning of every silent meditative period, we send forth a glad call to the Eternal. It is so good to be able to go Home, even for a few moments! As our thoughts calmly turn from the outer to the inner world, we soar into communion with a joyful salutation addressing the Eternal as though standing on a high cliff with arms outflung to the heavens. By degrees we are included in the silence of the Infinite.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
A friend once told me about the "home" he and his father had as refugees in Europe during World War II. He, his mother, and his younger brother moved constantly from place to place. . . . Each time they arrived in a new place, his mother would open the small suitcase that held all their belongings and bring out the lace tablecloth she had used for their Friday night meals in Poland, before they were forced to leave and begin their flight. In each place the ritual was exactly the same. She would place the suitcase on a table, carefully drape the tablecloth over the suitcase, light a candle, and in that moment, wherever it was became home. This ritual was their prayer.
~ Sue Bender in THE POWER OF PRAYER, ed. by Dale Salwak
The springs of the truest prayer and the deepest poetry, twin expressions of our outward-going passion for that Eternity which is our home, rise very near together in the heart.
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon in long, slow motion movements of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is the earth -- home.
