"Peace, peace, be still" came to me today when everything about me seemed in crisis. Tense, worried, anxiously running to and fro, I was like a tumultuous sea. Surely when the surface water is disturbed, we cannot see what otherwise would be clearly visible in the sea's depths. "Peace, be still." I suddenly realized that as long as I was rushed and agitated, I could not see beyond the surface of my problems. As my emotions quieted, I realized that God also was present in the depths of my life, the course of everlasting love unhindered by my problems.
Gentle us, O Compassionate One, that
We tread the earth lightly
And with grace,
Spreading peace, goodness, and love,
Without harm to any creature.
For in gentle serenity is strength
And assurance;
Confusion and suspicion find
No home here.
In all things may we be be grateful,
Our hearts open to joy.
~ Nan Merrill from her interpretation of "Psalm 105” in PSALMS FOR PRAYING
Surviving is for those who have no hope...as God’s child you were meant to thrive... You were meant to dig deep and reach out...Balanced believers dig their roots and reach out for others.
We have to say "Thank you” whenever possible even if we are not able to reconcile the human creatures’ free will with the Maker’s working out of a pattern. Thanks and Praise are, I believe, some of the threads with which the pattern is woven.
Dear Friends ~ When in the Northern Hemisphere the trees lay down their green chlorophyll to reveal their leaves' true, resplendent colors, and ruby sunsets bring sweet darkness ever sooner within the daily round, my soul trembles and sighs before these harbingers of Mystery. Mystery not in the sense of something to shrug and accept; I mean something Magnificent and Holy, accessible only through heart and humility, the prelude to transformation and the portal to belonging, to finding one's place as Mary Oliver says in "the family of things." When attended to this way, the gradual releasing and darkening going on in the natural world resonates with Presence and the promise of possibilities just beyond the veil. May you, dear ones, find in this season much to awaken and inspire you. May you be drenched in Mystery and drawn into the Heart of Love. ~ Lindsay
Enter into the Silence,
into the Heart of Truth;
For herein lies the Great Mystery
where life is ever unfolding...
Listen for the Music of the
Spheres in the resounding
Silence of
the universe.
May balance and harmony be your aim as you are
drawn into the
Heart of Love.
~ Nan Merrill from her interpretation of "Psalm 132" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING
Let us turn to the West:
the place of oncoming darkness,
the place of the departed spirits and of letting go; the
home of Bear and night-time dreams
and the season of Autumn.
We thank you for your gifts of Mystery and Transformation.
~ from the Seven Directions Prayer* (This prayer has many versions, source unknown)
We have not been raised to cultivate a sense of Mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a
personal failing. Seen this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But Mystery does not require action;
Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in
this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.
~ Rachel Naomi Remen in MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSINGS
What if we reframed "living with uncertainty" to "navigating mystery"? There's more energy in that phrase. The hum of imaginative voltage. And is our life not a mystery school, a seat of earthy instruction?
~ Martin Shaw from the essay "Navigating the Mysteries" on EMERGENCE MAGAZINE
You can relish a rainbow and a cup of tea, sunrise and a flock of birds, a cemetery walk and a friend's newborn, the first
blush of wildflowers in a patch of dirt and the looping rapture of an old favorite song. ... You can't mend a world, but you
can mend the hole in the polka- dot pocket of your favorite coat. They are not the same thing, but they are part of the same
thing, which is all there is — life living itself through us, moment by moment, one broken beautiful thing at a time.
~ Maria Popova in THE MARGINALIAN e-newsletter, May 15, 2022
The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes,
to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees,
that each of them is.
~ Marcel Proust from "La Prisonniere" in REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
...Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
The most important work can be birthed from the place where uncomfortable silence seeps between us. In those
moments we're faced with the decision of whether to respond immediately with the assuredness of our truth or to let the
silence work in us. To feel the sadness and anger and grief. To be reminded
that there's more at work in the story of the other ...
In the immense field of divine compassion, countless small
life fields are interwoven with each other. When human
hearts deepen through some form of contemplation, there
emerges in them an intuition of human oneness prior to all
separation ... a "communion of saints". In each religion's
communal story, there is a way of handing on from
generation to generation this transforming perception of
universal solidarity in the Mystery. We do not learn such
wisdom on our own. We receive this wisdom from
someone else.
~ Carolyn Gratton in THE ART OF SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE
Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring's green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth's dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin, "Come to Dust" in SO FAR SO GOOD
Dear Friends ~ When things fall apart, may we learn to embrace the complexity of our lives, befriending our uncertainty and our own lack of control. This is the unwanted doorway to the birth of new life within us. ~ Bob Sabath
Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, non-aggressive, open-ended state of affairs.
To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior.
The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees —
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.
~ Mary Oliver from "Entering the Kingdom" in DEVOTIONS
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently... And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
~ St. Francis de Sales in INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE
What is the relation of contemplation to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.
~ Thomas Merton in THOMAS MERTON SPIRITUAL MASTER: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS
