We human beings are in search of meaning, in search of our selves. Very little of what we already are and already have brings us deeper meaning or happiness. We are born for meaning, not pleasure, unless it is pleasure that is steeped in meaning. And we are born as well for suffering, not the suffering that leads to madness but the suffering that leads to joy: the struggle with ourselves and our illusions. We are born to overcome ourselves, and through that overcoming to find an inner condition of great harmony and being. We are born for that—we are not yet that. We are searchers; that is the essence of our present humanness.
Never become too holy or too spiritual. Let the Spirit align itself within you. Become what humanity can be. Nothing more and nothing less. There is no such thing as spiritual development or Higher Self or Greater Self or Lower Self. There is nothing to find, nowhere to go, nothing to reach up to. There is, however, LIFE, human life capable of Being itself. And that is already present in every moment of every day ... By relaxing very deeply and allowing your body to reach a point of stillness, the delicate strings of your Self will be found dancing with the deep current of love that is the Earth. This love is the dance of the still point in the open moment ... your Self is love in action.
~ from LEAVING MY FATHER'S HOUSE by Marion Woodman
There has to be enough communication so that silence can be a grace. That kind of silence demands a deeper love, and until that much love is developed, there is no point in pretending that the love is there when it isn't. The justification of silence in our life is that we love one another to be silent together ... In the depths of community life, we realize the grace of being silent together, but we don't arrive at this by excluding others or treating them as objects. It happens gradually as we learn to love ... The need is for a true silence which is alive and which carries a loving presence.
~ from THE SPRINGS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
What we are called to is conscious harmony with the whole of earthly evolution in the dissemination of Love. In its very essence spiritual knowledge will be changed into Love ... The exterior knowledge of the universe will be interiorised in us. Love is Wisdom reborn from the Self. Love will be manifested as a natural force. This is the secret of all future evolution.
A message was brought to me that a young woman who was dying had asked that I come visit her. She was fevered and emaciated; at first glance, a forbidding sight. Then I noticed her eyes -- huge and glowing, so incredibly beautiful I was entranced by them. All my embarrassment disappeared; all my searching about in my mind for some appropriate sanctimony became unnecessary. "What beautiful eyes!" I heard myself saying to her sister. She agreed saying that her sister had always had beautiful, glowing eyes. A silence fell upon us, and we were all three caught up in a wonderful joy. I knew, of course, what it was -- God's love enfolding us like lights from heaven.
~ from CONFESSIONS OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY PILGRIM by Malcolm Muggeridge
My arms are open. Come my Beloved
And rest upon my heart. It beats for You
And sings in joyous welcome. What am I
Except your resting place and your repose?
Your rest is mine. Without You I am lost
In senseless wanderings that have no end,
No goal, no meaning, on a road that goes
In twisted byways down to nothingness.
Come now, my Love and save me from despair.
The Way, the Truth, the Life are with me then.
The journey is forgotten in the joy
Of endless quiet and your kiss of peace.
If we "detach ourselves" from creatures such as human values, charisms, goods, if we do not use them in a domineering way, these creatures remain free. Our liberation therefore constitutes the liberation of creatures. Human energies and values, once liberated from abuse, can now enter into the realm of love. Entering into the sphere of love, both human beings and creatures remain within the process of DIVINIZATION, because God is Love.
The day will come when, after harnessing space,
the winds, the tides, and gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of love.
And on that day,
for the second time in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.
You who live within my heart,
Awaken me to the immensity of your spirit,
To the experience of your living presence!
Deliver me from the bonds of desire,
From the slavery of small aims,
From the prison of fear and ignorance,
From the delusion of egohood!
Enlighten me with the light of your wisdom,
Suffuse me with the incandescence of your love,
Which includes and embraces the darkness,
Like the light that surrounds the dark core of the flame,
Like the love of a mother that surrounds
The growing life in the darkness of her womb,
Like the earth protecting the tender germ of the seed.
Let me be the seed of your living light!
Give me the strength to burst the sheath of selfhood,
And like the seed that dies in order to be reborn,
Let me fearlessly go through the portals of death,
So that I may awaken to the greater life:
~ from THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS by Govinda with thanks to Edith Newcomb
And I said to the one who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." The reply: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That will be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."
Simplicity is a grace given to us by God ... a gift to be graciously received. Simplicity is also a discipline, which involves a consciously chosen course of action in both group and individual life. What we do does not give us simplicity, but it does put us in the place where we can receive it. It sets our lives before God in such a way that we are open to the grace of simplicity. Simplicity and solitude walk hand in hand along with silence. Solitude is the inward unity that frees us from the need for acclaim and approval. Through it we are enabled to be genuinely alone, for the fear of obscurity is gone; and, we are enabled to be genuinely with others, for they no longer control us. The grace of solitude must be rooted deep within if we are to know simplicity of heart.
In authentic contemplation, we discover within ourselves the hidden living and loving Companion Presence. We need to go to the solitude and silence of the wilderness, where God calls us by name, to a deeper place. This is where we are filled with the peace that the world cannot give and which the world cannot take from us. We discover there that we have and always shall be in God. It is the spacious place of the soul. To live there is finally to be at home. God is also at home there, and when we return, we have discovered simplicity.
~ from SIMPLICITY: THE ART OF LIVING by Richard Rohr
The spiritually mature affirm the value of hiddenness for those who wish to grow in love. To experience the hidden loving Companion Presence brings the greatest joy. This is the life of the simple ... the life of everyday. In the silent, hidden growth from acorn to oak can be seen the mystery and fulness of life. A seed is planted and forgotten. And suddenly one day the plant is there. Only in such hiddeness do miracles of growth occur. The same is true for the spiritual life. The Spirit plants the seed of divine union within the soul. For years this seed may be forgotten. Then one day, imperceptibly yet with determination, it will start to grow. Growth is such a quiet thing.
~ from APPROACHING THE SACRED by Susan Annette Muto
The center of our union with God is on a deeper level than mind or intellect. It is in the very center of existence, which could be called the will-to-God. This will is a silent faculty; it does not think, speak, remember or form images ... To know the will of God, we have only to remain silent, remain in the still center which, automatically, without a single thought, is the present acceptance of the present moment, and what we are at the moment ... The secret of the unitive life is the graced ability to live in this passive silence of our will running into God's will, a silence which is always here and now, and always one with God. The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication.
~ from THE PATH TO NO-SELF: LIFE AT THE CENTER by Bernadette Roberts with thanks to Maureen McAullif
GREETINGS and BLESSINGS to you in this new year ... a good time to reflect on where we have been in our hearts and the road we would aim to travel in these coming months ... and, perhaps, the time for a new prayer of the heart.
Our lives are a story, dear friends, a pilgrimage in which, hopefully, we grow to spiritual maturity, where we experience inner peace and joy, serenity, in trustfulness, in self-forgetting to self-transcendence. We are invited to surrender to the Holy Mystery together -- in loving communion with one another allowing the Spirit to make us one ... As long as we journey, as long as we are pilgrims and shaping our stories, we cherish the silence at the end of our activity and in the midst of our prayer, where the Holy One is present to be reverenced in mystery and loved in truth.
Only my footsteps in the snow,
Only the glow of my fire,
Only a choir of wind to sing the benediction.
But I feast on memories
In a holy place.
It has been so long since I have heard my own voice
It startles me
When I say the grace.
May all things lost, apart, alone
Find some small shelter of their own.
~ from THE ART OF BEV DOOLITTLE, "A Mountain Man's Christmas" by Elsie Maclay
A secret sympathy unites a great community. They recognize one another by a sign, by a look, by the magnetic atmosphere that each one emanates; by their silences more than by their words. Like the children of Light, they have the desire to know and to understand, to love and to believe. The countenances of the greatest among them are veiled by a strange melancholy; for the tragedy of the universe weighs heavily upon their hearts. They feel themselves responsible for it, as portions of the earthly providence that watches over human destiny. But through this veil there shines like an aureole of light the inward joy of those who behold Divinity. In the silence they are conscious of being united to all living creatures by an invisible thread.
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 ...
~ from "Intimations of Immortality" by William Wordsworth
