Be constant in your practice, and one day the One who gave you the desire for the prayer of the heart will give you that prayer itself. When your heart's intention is fixed on God, it will keep lit the incense of your prayer, and wind of distraction will not put it out. do not worry about stray thoughts; they may come and go, but they will not take your attention away from God.
Dear Friends ~ As nature slows down and deepens into stillness, we too turn inward and settle into quiet contemplation. Moving from the practice of silence into the presence of Silence, one might ask: "Who or what are we listening for? And how does this inner journey heal the agonizing cries of the world in a time when there is so much to be done?" In a conference on protecting the Chesapeake Bay watershed, after much talk on strategies, Rabbi Nina Beth Carlin remarked, "We work WAY upstream—we work with the soul." Perhaps this inner journey of silence is also a kind of working "way upstream" in the watershed of life. A few snippets from an article on "Why Silence Amplifies the Spirit" caught my eye:
Looking at me in the gentlest manner, the hermit said, "You are afraid, aren't you? You don't need to be afraid." His power lay in that he had no power. He merely looked deeply into my soul.
A tension broke within me, and much to my horror I began to weep. The tears quietly drained the hurt and terror from me and replaced it with peace.
"We are all deaf. The way of emptiness teaches us to hear...One day you will know that the emptiness is your friend."
~ from STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS by Michael D. O'Brien
The emptiness of the dark night is a yielding emptiness that gives way to the fullness of all possibility... If all your spiritual activities have grown empty and you are compelled to walk away, tie yourself to one practice only: contemplative silence. Abandon discursive prayer if it has become mechanical and meaningless. Let go of holy images if they no longer evoke the sacred. Refrain from spiritual discourse if it tastes like idle gossip in your mouth. But do not turn away from the silence.
~ from DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL by Mirabai Starr, translated by Fr. Iain Matthew
The rooting (of trees, of our selves) is as important and as necessary as the rising. We have the opportunity to sink roots into soul and rise up with branches in heaven...
Our spiritual growth is meant to go in both directions, toward the fertile darkness and the glorious light, each of us having the opportunity to bridge earth and heaven—the underworld and the upperworld—through the trunks of our middleworld lives....
There's no conflict between spirit-centered being and soulful doing, between transcendence and inscendence. Each supports and enhances the other. Like Rilke, we discover we can have both:
You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all;
The darkness of each endless fall,
The shimmering light of each ascent.
"Sit quietly and contemplate," said the Lama. "Get to know your anger, your fear, all your emotions. Dissect them and speak with them. Accept yourself and know every part of your own being. To understand oneself is to have compassion for everything."
The dark night of the soul refers to an extended period of acute purification that a spiritual practitioner undergoes immediately before making the final transition to deep spiritual awakening. It emphasizes purification and the act of letting go of what no longer serves after many lesser trials have been navigated.
~ from "Stepping into the Fire" by Chris Bache in IONS REVIEW, Mar-May 2002
"Will you abandon me forever, and
leave me comfortless in my distress?
Where is your steadfast Love that
made my soul to sing?
Are your promises empty,
that I feel so alone?"
The Power of your Love seems
too much for us;
Your Light unveils the secrets
hidden in our heart;
Can You wonder that we tremble?
Yet, You stand beside us as we walk
through our fears to
the path of wholeness and love,
though our footsteps are unsure.
~ excerpt from Psalm 77 in PSALMS FOR PRAYING, Nan Merrill
The spiritual function of fierce terrain (in the apophatic tradition) is to bring us to the end of ourselves, to the abandonment of language and the relinquishment of ego. A vast expanse of jagged stone, desert sand, and towering thunderheads has a way of challenging all the mental constructs in which we are tempted to take comfort and pride, thinking we have captured the divine. The things that ignore us save us in the end.
~ from THE SOLACE OF FIERCE LANDSCAPES by Belden Lane
