For millennia, a genuine cri du coeur, cry of the heart — a longing for a taste of mystery, a touch of the sacred — the yearning to embark upon a meaningful journey has been answered by pilgrimage, a transformative journey to a sacred center. It calls for a journey to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heroes, or to a natural setting imbued with spiritual power...always, it is a journey of risk and renewal. For a journey without challenge has no meaning; one without purpose has no soul.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love . . . Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
There is the same difference in a person before and after he or she is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too and that is its real function.
Real love is always difficult, as the German poet Rilke said, because "it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for the sake of another, it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances." Eventually, love forces us to turn within. In the Symposium, his meditation on love, Plato called love a child of fullness and emptiness, suggesting that there is a kind of desolation built into every love. There comes a moment in the progress of most loves when lovers feel isolated and unfulfilled, because they have discovered that they cannot find real and enduring meaning by reaching outside themselves, clinging to their lover. . . They may see that it is only by daring to open to the silence at the center of themselves that they can begin to feel the presence of the One whom they have been searching for all along.
~ from TRANSFORMATIONS: AWAKENING TO THE SACRED IN OURSELVES by Tracy Cochran and Jeff Zaleski
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility . . . though weary, it is not tired . . . though alarmed, it is not confounded . . .
Blessed are those whose hands and heart have maintained justice, who have lived in accordance with the laws of Love; those faithful to Love Consciousness will hear the good counsel, the guidance of Wisdom in their hearts. The fruits of integrity, justice, sharing, and compassion bear only blessing.
The greatest truth I know about life is that love is the answer. If you ask me what the question is, I will tell you it is every question you could ever ask. Love is always the answer to every question and problem. We are here to love and be loved and learn a few things in the process. I can never be wrong when I choose to love. Love rewards me by bringing meaning to my life.
~ from 365 PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE SOUL by Dr. Bernie S. Siegel
My interior life is a walk through darkness with the God within who leads us beyond and out of ourselves to become a vessel of Divine Love let loose upon the world.
When I say, "Love yourself," this is for those who have never gone inside, because they always can. . . . They are bound to understand only a language of duality. Love yourself—that means you are dividing yourself into two, the lover and the loved. You may not have thought about it, but if you go inside you will not love yourself, you will be love.
We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.
~ from SECRETS IN THE DARK: A LIFE IN SERMONS by Frederick Buechner, thanks to Liz Stewart
Happy New Year, dear Friends of Silence! As we embark on yet another year through this life of ours, let us do so knowing that we are filled with Light. Though sometimes we may feel we are lost, and though there are always many parts of this old world that are hurting and appear to be in deep darkness, we must remember that the Light is always present, all around and within us. It is up to us to turn, just slightly, and find that all-encompassing Light within ourselves. When we do, we find also that we can see it without. Let us begin this new year in full awareness of the Light that we are and the Light that surrounds us. We are called to be Light-bearers, dear friends!
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Light dwells deep within each of us ready to radiate forth as our will freely surrenders in alignment with our soul's purpose. We are here on Earth to lift and deepen our own awareness and that of creation: co-partners in the Divine Plan for the divinization of all creation. Seek within and find the Source of Love and Light. Shine in unity with all whose joy is to co-birth as a light in the world.
"Live up to the light that you have and more will be given to you" is a familiar Quaker saying. Indifference and inattentiveness dim the light, overzealousness causes it to flicker. William Penn warned against "running before we are sent." We can seldom be absolutely sure that we are following the light: psychology has taught us that the voice of the unconscious self may take on a spurious resemblance to a divine call. We can only do the best we know at the time and trust that the Spirit, the Eternal Goodness, Reality, The Christ Within, God -- the name seems to me to matter little -- may be able to make use of the willingness alone, as if just wishing to be sensitive to the light removed some obstacle to the movement of the divine in human affairs.
~ from QUIET PILGRIMAGE by Elizabeth Gray Vining, as quoted in AN ALMANAC FOR THE SOUL by Marv and Nancy Hiles
Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?
As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be
Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.
The canyon bleeds, then deepens and darkens ... A sliver of white moon in the east. Thin Light spills into the gorge and the river sings an ancient song. At the edge of shadow, night: dark stone, pine scent, water, cascading Light.
The flowers that sleep by night opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation's mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.
You must not think of the light of the sun as the true Light of God. It is a reflection of the true Light. That other Light, that we can neither know nor comprehend, is so subtle, so highly potent that, for us . . . it is darkness.
