July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

Anne Strader

Summer Blessings, dear friends!  Vacation season is here and many of us are traveling in the literal sense during these months.  Opportunities for rest, relaxation, and fun are real gifts, and we enjoy visiting  new places and exploring unfamiliar surroundings.  As we travel in the world, our spiritual journey is ongoing as well, down at the heart of everything.  It's wonderful to have opportunities to  enjoy all we see and hear and taste and feel outwardly, but let us also be attentive to what is happening on the inner path.  Inner and outer often overlap, and we may become aware of marvelous cues and synchronicities in the outer world that offer opportunities for much growth and progress on our inner journey.

Our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage

S. T. Georgiou | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

Much of life…is about awakening to the interior experience.  In our day-to-day living, we come to see how all of our physical journeying is not simply a temporal exercise, a transitory, earthly trek, but increasingly points to a shared and liberating inner passage . . .  As Christianity and all the great religious traditions of the world testify, our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage leading to -- and beyond -- the gates of the heart.
 

~ from THE ISLE OF MONTE CHRISTO by S. T. Georgiou

There comes a time in the spiritual journey

Angeles Arrien | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

There comes a time in the spiritual journey when you start making choices from a very different place . . .  And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health, happiness, wisdom, and love, it’s the right choice.
 

~ Angeles Arrien

The real journey in life is interior

Thomas Merton | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

The real journey in life is interior. 
It is a matter of growth, deepening,
and of an ever greater surrender to the
creative love and grace in our hearts.
 

~ Thomas Merton

A spiritual journey is not a competitive event

Kerry M. Olitzky and Carol Ochs | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

Everything we need for growing into a full, rich relationship with God is already available in our lives.  We need to pray, stay open, and not become discouraged.  A spiritual journey is not a competitive event; we can all be on a spiritual quest.  God comes to each of us in the native language of our soul.  Gradually the language grows and expands, but no one grows in just the same way as someone else.  We need to accept ourselves as we are and keep ourselves open to being changed and shaped by a life lived in growing intimacy with God.
 

~ from JEWISH SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE by Carol Ochs and Kerry M. Olitzky

The path with heart is an inner one

Jean Shinoda Bolen | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

The outer path we take is public knowledge, but the path with heart is an inner one. The two come together when who we are that is seen in the world coincides with who we deeply are. As we grow wiser, we become aware that the important forks in the road are usually not about choices that will show up on any public record; they are decisions and struggles to do with choosing love or fear; anger or forgiveness; pride or humility. They are soul-shaping choices.
 

~ from CRONES DON’T WHINE by Jean Shinoda Bolen, thanks to Liz Stewart

We come to a crossroad

Robert Wicks | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

With each discovery of truth about ourselves, we come to a crossroad on our journey toward God.  One path leads to denial and despair . .. the other to holiness.
 

~ Robert Wicks

I came to rest at the altar of the stars

Rabindranath Tagore | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

From the forest branches fading
        birdsong offered
Self-sacrifice to a huge silence.
Dark formlessness settled over all
        diversity
Of land and water.  As shadows, as particles,
        my body
Fused with endless night.  I came to rest
At the altar of the stars.  Alone, amazed,
        I stared
Upwards with hands clasped and said,
        "Sun, you have removed
Your rays: show now your loveliest,
        kindlier form
That I may see the Person who dwells in
        me as in you."
 

~ The Borderlands - 9 - Rabindranath Tagore

Charting a new path to the future

Joan Chittister | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

There is a time in every life
when the very act
of looking back and taking stock
becomes essential
to going forward.

Without the light
that shines out of the darkness
of the past,
we cannot chart
a new path
to the future.
 

~ from MONASTERIES OF THE HEART by Joan Chittister

Completed the journey at last

Thomas Keating | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey.  Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union.  The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
 

~ from FRUITS AND GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT by Thomas Keating

A God seeker is a person on a journey

James Fenhagen | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

A God seeker is a person on a journey.  When the thirst has been awakened, we are no longer persons wandering aimlessly about, but persons who have begun to discern the bare outlines of a path.  We become more than wanderers.  It is a journey based upon the assumption that there is more to life than meets the eye.
 

~ from MORE THAN WANDERERS by James Fenhagen

There is no there anywhere

Marv and Nancy Hiles | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through,
passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where
a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed
behind the facade of the common.
 

~ from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE by Marv and Nancy Hiles

To journey hopefully

July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

To journey hopefully is better than to arrive.
 

~ Chinese Proverb

No glimse of the light without walking the path

Peace Pilgrim | July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path.  You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone.  You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
 

~ Peace Pilgrim