To acknowledge the Sacred within is humbling. One's ego portrays itself as the captain of its separate destiny, like an intrepid explorer, seeing things and naming them for the first time. Ego doesn't care for the idea that MY hunger for love, MY grief, and MY thankfulness are not only mine but also God's in me. As our egos die into Love, we see that our personal stories are transparent to an infinitely larger story within us. Suffering "in God" is allowing our small stories to be like icons, transmitting a Great Light.
~ from REBECCA: A Father's Journey by Robert A. Jonas
We collect data, things, people, ideas, 'profound experiences,' never penetrating any of them . . . But there are other times. There are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
~ James Carroll, in SILENCE AND SOLITUDE, edited by Eileen Campbell