February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Nan Merrill

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.

Love is the lodestone of life

Ernest Holmes | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Love is the lodestone of life, the great and supreme reality... the highest gift of heaven, the greatest good on earth, the treasure of all our search. While hate kills, love renews and invigorates. As love is the greatest healing power, no one feels whole without it. Love need not be confined to only a few, but can be extended to many without losing the love of a few. In fact, when love becomes more complete it will take in a large and larger territory and in doing so experience a greater degree of livingness.

~ by Ernest Holmes

The important thing is to allow love into one's life

Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

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

Until love's work is done

Susan Sherard | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

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.

~ by Susan Sherard

Love is a verb

Anonymous | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Love is a verb ... not a noun.

~ Anonymous

Love includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child

Wendell Berry | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)
Love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is not explainable or even justifiable. Love itself is the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. Love includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. Love is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.
~ from JABER CROW by Wendell Berry

Look with the eyes of love

Evelyn Underhill | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

To "look with the eyes of love" seems a vague and sentimental recommendation; yet the whole art of spiritual communion is summed in it, and exact and important results flow from this exercise. The attitude which it involves is an attitude of complete humility and of receptiveness, without criticism, without clever analysis of the thing seen... The doors of perception are cleansed, and everything appears as it is. The disfigurating results of hate, rivalry, prejudice vanish away. Into that silent place to which recollection has brought you — new music, new color, new light are poured from the outward world.

~ from PRACTICAL MYSTICISM by Evelyn Underhill

Love all that has been created by God

Fedor Dostoevsky | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the bids, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand he mystery of the whole resting in God. When you perceive this, your understanding of this mystery will grow from day to day until you come to love the whole world with a love that includes everything, excluding nothing.

~ from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fedor Dostoevsky

Love is the voice under all silences

e. e. cummings | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)
Love is the voice under all silences, The hope which has no opposite in fear.
~ by e. e. cummings

For silence is not God, nor speaking

Anonymous | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)
For silence is not God, nor speaking; fasting is not God, nor eating; solitude is not God, nor company; nor any other pair of opposites. God is hidden between them and cannot be found by anything your soul does, but only by the love of your heart. God cannot be known by reason, nor by thought, caught, or sought by understanding. But God can be love and chosen by the true, loving will of your heart.
~ from THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

To love is to be vulnerable

Verna J. Dozier | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Creation is an act of love ... and, to love is to be vulnerable. The story of creation bears that fact out. The lover seeks the beloved. The lover is not complete without the beloved. Human beings are most fully human when they realize that they are creatures and give joyful response to the Creator. All that we are and all that we have comes from God; we are part of God's dream for a good creation using our freedom to do God's will.

~ from THE DREAM OF GOD by Verna J. Dozier

Love is, and may proceed from wherever you are

Jennifer Lash | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)
Every night I had a sense to consciously pitch the tent of my being in a definite place of "unknowing." Bang in the pegs saying, I do not know anything. Inside the tent it might be dark, or maybe there were spins of moonlight. But in there, somehow or other, you know there is love. Love is, and may proceed from wherever you are, without you knowing anything very much.
~ from ON PILGRIMAGE by Jennifer Lash

There is no limit to our capacity love

Eknath Easwaran | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

There is no limit to our capacity love. We can never be satisfied by loving just one person here and another there. Our need is to love completely, universally, without reservations — in other words, to become love itself. It can take our breath away to glimpse the vastness of such love.

~ from A MORE ARDENT FIRE by Eknath Easwaran

Love has conquered by fear

Kathleen A. Brehony | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)
I am the one who needs to give thanks for the opportunity that I had to be a part of this miracle. It's enough to know that because of my kidney, my sister has a new lease on life; an opportunity to enjoy her young marriage, to care for her young son. Yes, I give thanks, for Love has conquered by fear.
~ from AFTER THE DARKEST HOUR by Kathleen A. Brehony

Let yourself be silently drawn

Rumi | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Let yourself be silently drawn,
by the strong pull
of what you really love.

~ by Rumi

Instead of looking to other humans for love

Don Miguil Ruiz | February 2003 (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

Instead of looking to other humans for love, we need to align with our own love, because it's not the love of other humans that will make us happy. What will make us happy is the love we feel for every human, the love we feel for God, for all creation. When the love comes from someone else, we can love it and it's nice; but when we feel our own love, it's the best thing that can happen to us. We live in heave, we live in bliss. Open your heart and love unconditionally — not because you want love in return, and not because you want to control someone. That is false love. When you love with no conditions you transcend the dream of fear and become aligned with divine spirit, the love of God, which is love coming from you. That love is LIFE, and just like the sun, it is shining all the time.

~ by Don Miguil Ruiz