When a gong or "singing bowl" is struck in the silent stillness, a reverberating sound is suddenly born...it lingers briefly...decays and dies. The sound can represent the span of our life-experience, but never our Life. Our true self is not the perishable sound, but the imperishable, still silence from which the sound arose and resonated temporarily. Indeed, this truth has even greater depths for it may be understood, that in our essence, we are none other than That which strikes the gong, so to speak, and silently witnesses the resulting "sound."
I weave a silence on my lips
I weave a silence into my mind
I weave a silence within my heart
I close my ears to distractions
I close my eyes to attractions
I close my heart to temptations
Calm me O Lord as you stilled the storm
Still me O Lord, keep me from harm
Let all tumult within me cease
Enfold me Lord in your peace.
AUTUMN GREETINGS! How quickly the seasons pass ... seasons of nature, seasons of life. 'Tis good to remember that in eternal time there is only Love, Peace, and Unity.
Contemplation consists essentially in the affective knowledge that is the fruit of the gift of wisdom. Contemplation attains God in a different way from faith, which is a more objective type of knowledge. Affective knowledge is rooted in love and blossoms into love. Love takes the place of the concept; love is its light. In this act of affective knowledge, we touch God, so to speak, and are conformed to God.
The act of love plunges us into God, who is given in silence. Anything else would run the risk of detracting from the gift. This act of love or affective knowledge frees us from ourselves. And, in this love, God is revealed in a silence that strips us and makes us experience that "blessed are the poor". Silence preserves us from illusion and gives us a security.
My whole spiritual life consists more and more in abandoning myself (actively) to the presence and action of God. To be in communion with Becoming has become the formula of my whole life.
We are -- all of us -- contemplatives in the root and ground of our being. For at the root of our being, we are one with God, one with one another, one with the world in which we live. Spending time in prayer is not a means of achieving oneness, but of recognizing that it is there. Prayer does not make us contemplatives; rather it can make us aware that we truly are contemplatives, but at a level of perception we do not often achieve. Prayer, silence and solitude are moments of grace that can awaken us to the contemplative side of our being.
Insight and fresh vision inevitably depend on our ability to free ourselves from the prejudices and stereotypes that we have inherited, along with everyone else. Merton believed that silence and solitude could play a crucial role in this respect. For example, once, in the middle of the shopping district, he had what for want of better words we must call a mystical experience. There "at the corner of Fourth and Walnut" he was "suddenly overwhelmed with realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness." In that ordinary, everyday, unremarkable setting he suddenly saw and felt God's love for each person, and the deep solidarity that exists between each member of the human race despite their illusions of separateness.
Lord, am I such a pain in the neck? I see you everywhere, yet turn from your presence in the faces of my wife and children. I look for your face everywhere and then spit in your face -- in the faces of those you give me to love ... and in whom you offered your love for me again and again in a million imperfect ways every day. I turn from them if they aren't just so -- just perfect. Nevertheless, your quiet is finally growing in me ... I want to calm my restless feelings, Lord, and look deeply into the faces of my family and see you face to face as we talk during our meal.
~ from BECOMING AN EVERYDAY MYSTIC by James W. Warnke
Breakthroughs to a new state of being are often preceded by a state of turbulence in which there seems to be a lack of order, as in water that boils before it reaches another state of being as steam. The world is now going through great changes. It is possible that life has no meaning or purpose. Yet there is also another viewpoint: that through our increased awareness and closeness we are coming into another state of being. Such awareness can move us to be more fully human than ever before in history, because it is ultimately awareness, not denial, that creates greater humanness. Teilhard sees the purpose of God as moving us toward the next stage of evolution, moving us toward a new, deeper worldwide interconnection of human beings.
~ from THE SERENITY PRAYER BOOK by William V. Pietsch
O Silent Meeting, starting with a sigh
Of helpless awaiting for God's Presence there,
Each one alone, together sit, and I
Of my own breathing in and out aware.
The breath of God doth move within my heart
As surely in, and out, as that of me.
The Seed there needs to breathe if it's to start
To grow, to act within my life, to be
As breathing can't in life be hurried much,
So, too, the Seed will take its breathing space.
And, giving over will, desire, and such
I wait, expectant, bound to time and place.
Our mingled breathings fertilize the Seed,
And help us grow from Inward Light to deed.
GREETINGS! The summertimes of our lives are times to rest and appreciate who we are, to relax and enjoy, to celebrate the extravagance and exuberance of creation, to remember to pause, to let the joy and wonder of becoming like a child again well up within us. Summer re-creation offers times to be free to be nothing, to be present in grateful receptivity, wordless awe, silent simplicity ... times to dip into the well of contemplation.
As we become sensitive to our soul's experience, we find the smallest moments, the slightest breezes, can move so much inside us in the stillness. Life's brief encounters with intimacy have more importance. With the subtle qualities we find in our inner life, the silence leads us. The pure presence always begins inside. From our soul's quiet recesses we are taken to caverns and gardens and skies above mansions of silence. Our interior life is full of the ways of the soul. Our dreams, feelings, intuition, and thoughts are just the beginnings of the vast language of our soul in the silence. In our meditations and prayers we hear the small whispers, the perfect presence speak to us, seeking our awareness and appreciation. To value our inner life is to open the doors for the galaxies of stars in the silence to be discovered. These stars turn out to be not so far away but right next to our soul and in the midst of the hearts of those around us.
~ from MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS by Bruce Davis with thanks to Mary Lou Evans
O Great Spirit, whose breath gives light to the world, and whose voice is heard in the soft breeze: We need Your strength and wisdom. Cause us to walk in beauty. Give us eyes ever to behold the red and purple sunset. Make us wise so that we may understand what you have taught us. Help us to learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. Make us always ready to come to you with clean hands and steady eyes, so when life fades, like the fading sunset, our spirits may come to you without shame. Amen.
~ traditional Native American Prayer with thanks to Liz Simons
No escape from paradox: Wisdom manifests itself, and is yet hidden. The more it hides, the more it is manifest; and the more it is manifest, the more it is hidden. For God is known when apprehended as unknown, and is heard when we realize that we do not know the sounds of God's voice. The words uttered are words of full silence, and they are bait to draw us into silence. The truths manifested are full of hiddenness, and their function is to hide us, with themselves, in God from whom they proceed. If we hide the precepts of wisdom in our heart -- precepts of humility, meekness, charity, renunciation, faith, prayer -- they themselves will hide us in God. For the values which they give to us, are completely hidden from our eyes. They bring us to the source of a life that is unknown to the natural wisdom of the world, and yet from this source of nature itself proceeds, is nourished, and is sustained.
All persons are both artist and mystic because all are called to be in touch with the true self, the deep experience that is theirs, and to utter images from that silent space.
The act of love plunges us into God, who is given in silence. Anything else would run the risk of detracting from the gift. "Silence is the speech of God", according to St. John of the Cross. This act of love frees us from ourselves. In this love, God is revealed in a silence that strips us and makes us experience that "blessed are the poor". Silence preserves us from illusion and gives us security ... The grace of contemplation places the soul in a kind of immobility and silence, which we cannot do of ourselves. God does all this by way of love, which involves a death of the mind and a resurrection of the heart.
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fear.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
Loss of interest in judging self and in judging other people.
Loss of interest in conflict, and in interpreting actions of others.
Loss of ability to worry. Frequent episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling through the eyes of the heart.
Increasing susceptibility to love ~ and the urge to expand it.
Increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
If you have the above symptoms, your condition of peace may be so far advanced as to not be treatable.
Let us then, labour for an inward stillness,
An inward stillness and an inward healing;
That perfect silence where the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart, that we may know
His will, and in the silence of our spirits,
That we may do his will, and do that only.
Warmest GREETINGS as we move into a new season. May each one of us take time to walk down the path that leads to the sacred Silence. And as we learn to treasure our inner awareness, may we come to know the immense love, the intense light, within the vastness of our own soul.
We have a destination: the heart of God. Though we have come a long way from our true home, we can still return if we give ear to our spiritual instincts, our inner heritage as a spiritual being. To do this, we must listen for the heavenly music, the Voice of God, which is constant, changeless, and unerring. Have you ever gazed in awe as a flock of migrating geese cuts through the sky? Did you look up with a strange longing welling up in you, a lonely restlessness which you cannot name? If so, you have felt the call to Soul ... you have heard the Voice of God."
~ from ON THE BREATH OF THE GODS by Ariel Tomioka with thanks to Angie Sherrard
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
