I sat and thought about inventing "staggering meditation." I decided that I would go for a walk, and rather than take my "stick" along as a necessary evil and out of anxiety over falling, I would "invite" my cane to be my helper… For so many years, because of my anger, I deprived myself of support I needed to be fully mobile...I have come to an awareness that my companion is a gift that helps connect me not only with the ground, but also with the many others who for a variety of reasons cannot walk easily, but who also stagger. When I am connected with these brothers and sisters, I no longer feel separated or left out. Rather than a reminder of a terrible past, I have uncovered a deep root of present meaning in the "tree" that I hug in my hand.
~ from "Staggering Meditation" by Vietnam vet Alan Cutter, in A JOYFUL PATH by Thich Nhat Hanh and friends
Do not forget that the value and interest of life is no so much to do conspicuous things as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.
Sooner or later we shall have to acknowledge that love is the fundamental impulse of Life. It is through love and within love that we must look for the deepening of our deepest self in the life-giving coming together of humankind. Love is the free and imaginative outpouring of the spirit over all unexplored paths. It links those who love in bonds that unite but do not confound, causing them to discover in their mutual contact an exaltation capable of arousing in the heart of their being all that they possess of uniqueness and creative power.
O God, that at all times You may find me as You desire me and where You would have me be, that You may lay hold on me fully, both by the Within and the Without of myself, grant that I may never break the double thread of my life.
Throughout my life, by means of my life, the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become my experience in contact with the earth -- the diaphany of the Divine at the heart of the universe on fire ... Christ's heart, a fire! capable of penetrating everything and gradually spreading everywhere.
Teilhard de Chardin practiced the art of self-forgetfulness; the self being forgotten in a sympathetic union with all people and with every man and woman individually. The deep roots of his simultaneous love of God and the world is seen most clearly in THE DIVINE MILIEU:
