In prayer, seek to make yourself into a vessel for God's Presence. See yourself as nothing; only one who is nothing can contain the fullness of the Presence.
There are times when the love of God burns so powerfully within your heart that the words of prayer seem to rush forth, quickly and without deliberation.
At such times it is not you yourself who speak; rather it is THROUGH you that the words are spoken.
~ from YOUR WORD IS FIRE by Dr. Arthur Green and Barry W. Holtz
Let us sing to the Creator of the cosmos, to the divine power of love! When we look at the wondrous display of the heavens, at the Earth with its infinite variety of life, Who are we that You love us, that You rejoice in our being; that You trust us to care for creation in all its splendor, inviting us to become co-creators with You? Let us celebrate the mystery of life! Let us commit our lives to the Divine Plan!
To live creatively is to live from the soul, to shape our circumstances out of our deepest desires instead of conforming our dreams to the circumstances in which we live. Once we experience the joy, the power of creating our own lives, we find that creating in other arenas comes naturally, an outflow of abundant energy that comes with being true to our essence.
Creative work, like love, is not an exclusive gift bestowed on only a chosen few... A sea of love, an inexhaustible wellspring of creativity, bubbles behind the consciousness of each one of us. All creative work, that which is life-giving, that is done in its own name and for its own sake is divine in nature. Through it, people elevate themselves and fill their own hearts and the hearts of those around them with Love.
When we get out of the way, the wild and creative force which flows through us all will rush into the inlet, the space we have vacated within our everyday selves.
The very thoughts that allow us to hurt another limit our ability to express the will of creation through ourselves. At the same time, each time we love another, we have just loved ourselves. Each time we create time for another, strive to understand another, we have just done each of these things for ourselves. When we disapprove of the actions, choices or beliefs of others, we witness through them those portions of ourselves that ask for a greater healing.
We can make a difference when we draw on our courage and creativity to stand up for our beliefs. Our small actions carry a cumulative power that can shift the planet onto a more positive course. We only need to tap our innate creativity and connect with expression not only through a particular medium like paint or clay or words; the other medium we all have to express our creativity is our lives.
As human beings, we're innately creative, capable of great love, and creatures of community. When we draw on our natural gifts and act together, we have enormous power to ease suffering and invent new possibilities for a better world.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Summertime Blessings of sunshine's radiance, blossoming's beauty, laughter of children at play ... Love's eternal and infinite variety at the heart of Life. In the stillness of no-time we are free of fear, free to simply be without burdensome thoughts of past or future. Here, "I am who I am" ... here, we are One in Being with All. In the deep Silence of timelessness, may we surrender to the Eternal Now, be present to each holy instant, and know Love-with-us always.
Coming out of the movie, I realized that I want what the crones have: time for all those long deep breaths, time to watch more closely, time to learn to enjoy what I've always been afraid of--the sad and the invisibility; the ease of understanding that life is not about doing. The crones understand this, and it gives them all kinds of time--time to get much less done, time for all the holy moments.
The eternal moment is outside of time, is not a part of our past or our future, and yet it is lived amidst all our everyday activities. It is in the eternal moment that love is born. Love does not belong to time, and its timeless quality is well known to all lovers. The lover has to learn to still the mind in order to catch the moment and stay true to love's unfolding. Wayfarers tread a path that leads from illusions of time to the eternal moment that belongs to the soul.
We are made of time. We are its feet and its voice. The feet of time walk in our shoes. Sooner or later, we all know, the winds of time will close the tracks. Passage of nothing, steps of no one. The voice of time tells of the voyage.
Let us become attuned to that Transcendental Being imparted to all things by divine action. It deserves our attention, and those who heed it with an open heart and with confidence and courage need not fear. For divine action has always been the source from which flows a torrent of grace which spreads over everything. Our lives flow unceasingly in that unknown deep where all that is necessary is to love and to accept the present moment as the best, with perfect trust in God's universal goodness.
~ from SACRAMENT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT by Jean Pierre de Caussade
I resolve to live with all my might while I do live. I resolve never to lose one moment of time and to improve my use of time in the most profitable way I possibly can. I resolve never to do anything I wouldn't do if it were the last hour of my life.
Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light, you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once.
One of the greatest mysteries in life is the mystery of time. Everything that happens to us, happens to us in and through time. Time is the force that brings every new experience to the door of your heart. All that happens to you is controlled and determined by time. Time opens up and opens out the mystery of the soul.
Memory is the repository of the past, which is where most of our living takes place. We have divided life into past, present, and future, and this division, like all of our divisions, removes us from the fullness of living, from the mysterious unknown and unknowable movement of life that is the source of all beauty. The past exists only in memory, and the future is merely a projection of past memories. Now, this moment, is all there is.
We were breaking an unspoken social rule. We were talking about God and religion at a time when the stakes were high, when turmoil and confusion were the order of the day. We were harried, busy mothers, but at our meetings we found ourselves released from Time, suspended from the reality of the outside world. ... Our relationship was turning into something sacred, something we began to call our Faith Club.
~ from THE FAITH CLUB: a Muslim, A Christian, A Jew by R. Idliby, S. Oliver, and P. Warner
In the realm of timelessness we discover God. If we have ever become aware of the moment when we understood something, we must have realized the extratemporal nature of the event. Extemporaneous means outside of time. Indeed, the gift of making extemporaneous comments hinges on our receptivity to inspired wisdom, reaching our consciousness from the realm of the timeless.
