The Spirit of God is a life that bestows life, root of world-tree and the wind in its boughs. Scrubbing out sin, she rubs oil into wounds. She is glistening life alluring all praise, all-awakening, all-resurrecting.
I walked through the birches by the river today. Overwhelming! The earth is stripped down to simple designs. The land has become a visual haiku. Sun on the fretwork of twigs. Blood droplets of rose hips clinging to the bushes. The chatter of the creek against trimmings of ice. The skiff of snow. My breath a white cloud like a departing soul... I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.
~ from STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS by Michael D. O'Brien
We have the potential to become like a tree planted by the stream.
Like the tree, we need nurturance — both of water and of sun if
we are to blossom. We need nurturance from all the elements;
without the soil, the sun, and the air, our food will not grow.
We need nurturance from the plants. We all need human nurturance
in the form of friendship and love, and we need God's own divine
nurturance which empowers us to trust in the Author of creation.
Spirituality in the ecological epoch will be based on a sense of
deep communion with all beings through empathy, through the power
of the heart, through our deepest intuition of the sacred pulse of
life and the sacred nature of the cosmos.
~ from A SACRED PLACE TO DWELL by Henryk Skolimowski
To discover the universe is a big step toward knowing ourselves.
As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by
the Earth. The natural world tells us: I will feed you, I will clothe
you, I will shelter you, I will heal you. Only do not so devour me or
use me that you destroy my capacity to mediate the divine and the human.
For I offer you a communication with the divine. In the vastness
of the sea, in the snow-covered mountains, in the rivers flowing through
the valleys, in the serenity of the landscape, and in the foreboding of
the great storms that sweep over the land — I offer you inspiration
for your music, your art, your dance. All these benefits the Earth
gives to us: individually, communally, and throughout the entire Earth.
~ Thomas Berry in MAKING PEACE ed. by McConnell and van Gelder
Walking home, I ponder about a love of art and I think about my love of the land back home, about the healing grace of wildness, and how difficult it is to articulate why conservation matters, why wilderness matters to the health of our souls and how a language of the heart becomes suspect. I wonder how it is we have come to this place where art and nature are spoken in terms of what is optional?
My daughter, three years old and fearless, loves nothing more than wading along the shallow shoreline outside our house. Holding hands, we walk barefoot upstream quietly in the water, stepping delicately over stones. Besides the water sounds, there is just immense silence. We stop and listen to the water. She asked me for a story; I did not have one. Listening, she turned in delight and announced, "Daddy, this water is talking." In listening to the river a kind of silence prevails, broken only by the rush of water over rocks. Such a silence is more like faint echoes, each a series of dim reverberations. They continue in you, distant yet familiar.
Friends, let us be blessed in this new Spring season! May Nature teach us the beauty of simplicity and wonder, authentic freedom and Beingness, acceptance and delight in each stage of life, and, the interdependence of our planetary community. May we pause from time to time, breathe in the silence, and let nature's gifts speak to us.
Silently a flower blooms, In silence it falls away; Yet here now, at this moment, at this place, The world of the flow, the whole of the world is blooming. This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom; The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
Prayer fulfills the need humans have for God, for inspiration, for affirmation of our own spirits. In prayer, we communicate with the essence of everything that exists, including our own essence. We have a message to share with life, with God, and we want to share it with authority. The message is coming directly from our hearts, we are talking with our divinity, with Divinity Itself. The power of prayer can lead us into love, truth, and personal freedom.
As your prayer and meditation become deeper, they will defend you
from the perpetual assaults of the outer world. You will hear the
busy hum of that world as a distant exterior melody, and know
yourself to be in some way withdrawn from it. You have set a ring
of silence between you and it; and behold! within the silence you
are free.
Sacred Friend, be with us this day. Within us to purify us; Above us to draw us up; Beneath us to sustain us; Before us to lead us; Behind us to restrain us; Around us to protect us.
There are two dimensions to prayer: speech and silence. Of the two,
speech is necessary, but silence takes precedence. Silence is the
authentic medium of prayer, the rich matrix in which true communion
becomes possible. And being a medium, silence has a positive existence.
For the one who truly understands prayer, silence also conveys a message;
it too speaks... Silence prepares the soul for prayer, to hear the
pain of others, the pain of the world.
I know in my cells that prayer permeates a sick body, makes it
shimmer as the new life comes in, making the cells remember
how to respond to the harmonic whole. Music is like prayer
a mystical bridge between heaven and earth.
If you cannot meditate, you can repeat one simple word; this is good
for the soul. Do not say anything else, just repeat the word over
and over, innumerable times. Finally, it will lose all meaning, yet
take on an entirely new significance. God will open the doors and
you will find yourself using that simple word to say everything you
wanted to say. Thus, routine work can be transformed into prayer.
Every moment in life is a prayer, or could be. I think you can pray yourself into the mystery of the moment, or allow for the blessings of the moment to sustain you. Every moment is an invitation, and whatever you do in that moment, if it's dedicated to God, then it is a prayer.
~ from THE WAY OF THE DREAMCATCHER by S. T. Georgiou
In the quiet of this place in the dark of the night I wait and watch. In the stillness of my soul and from its fathomless depths the senses of my heart are awake to You. For fresh soundings of life for new showings of light I search in the silence of my spirit, O Blessing God.
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stack- still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train. Pray for us now.
A small seed sowed in the field. I am back to the part of darkness in
my prayer. As the seed opens in the ground, so the soul opens in the
ground, in the dark. Over the last decade, with each faltering step I
took into this darkness, my prayer — a prayer of no words — found
deeper roots. This way of prayer is the dark way of silence. This way
takes leave of discourse, of the mind, and turns to the heart, the
dwelling place of God.
~ from CIRCLING TO THE CENTER by Susan M. Tiberghien
Praying is not necessarily best described always as
looking towards God; sometimes and especially in
intercession, it is equally a learning to look at the
world as if with God's eyes.
In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty — the duty of prayer — the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. Daily devotions were more important than daily food. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet Earth, and the Great Silence alone.
Praying our experiences is a way into the depth of self-knowledge
and acceptance. As we unfold our experiences and become aware of
our blessedness and our brokenness, we begin to become more aware
of the God who alone can fill all our life with graciousness.
~ from PRAYING OUR EXPERIENCES by Joseph F. Schmidt
