The Earth is home to all creation, to be lovingly cared for by us in communion with the Divine Friend. Praises be to the Creator of the cosmos! With grateful hearts, let us give thanks! What other return can we give to the One, Who continues to gift us with life? When we open our heart to the Friend, when we live with compassion and kindness, we walk in beauty! We come to know the Divine Guest, Whose companioning Presence is ever with us.
Persons hungry for silence and for solitude seek a depth of contemplative experience in which one's usual assumptions about daily life are brought into question. The hunger for retreat carries with it a recognition that there is no other way out of many situations in which we find ourselves in the complexity of our lives. There is no other way than to take our messes into the darkness of silence before the Beloved... that by going into this silence, darkness, and helplessness can life be brought forth to sustain either ourselves or our world.
~ from "Come Apart and Rest Awhile" by Frances Irene Taber
