Soul is the place of the heart. Soul is interiority and stillness and spaciousness where the attention of the heart burns, where constant desire leaps forth like flames ... If we live in the depths, our soul listens with full attention to what is happening, cherishes what is meaningful as would someone about to die who must make every decision rich with the weight of right choice. The soul of a person receives everything, tries to understand or stand under what is given while at the same time realizes that no complete understanding is possible, so it remains awed and mystified. A pure and utterly poor soul receives everything without the resistance of a craving, clinging, self-important ego. Like a Mother Teresa, it opens wide its mouth and receives every blessing so that, in turn, it can transfer those blessings to all others ... The soul, which is utterly personal, trusts with all its might in the Force of the Divine Benevolence. It trusts that the Pneuma Christ is the strongest force at work in the world, mightier than all the most crude and cruel tyrants or any other violent destroyers of human dignity. That Supreme Force has won out. We must but tap into it, and surrender to it. The chief act of the soul is surrender. Surrender emanates from a soul stilled in quiet leisure and struck with holy awe.
~ from SOUL: THE MARIAN PRINCIPLE by Pat McGowan in the Nada Network
On the first night God said: 'Let there be darkness.' And God separated light from dark; and in the dark, the land rested, the people slept, and the plants breathed, the world retreated. The first night. And God said that it was Good.
On the second night God said: 'There will be conversations that happen in the dark that can't happen in the day.' The second night. And God said that it was Good.
On the third night God said: 'Let there be things that can only be seen by night.' And God created stars and insects and luminescence. The third night. And God said that it was Good.
On the fourth night God said: 'Some things that happen in the harsh light of day will be troubled. Let there be a time of rest to escape the raw light.' The fourth night. And God said that it was Good.
~ Padraig O'Tuama, "A liturgy for the night" in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY
So let us pick up
the stones over which we stumble,
friends, and build altars...
Let us name the harsh light and
soft darkness that surround us.
Let's claw ourselves out from the graves we've dug.
Let's lick the earth from our fingers.
Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and
our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.
~ Padraig O'Tuama in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY
...Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.
Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.
Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us...
The world is big, and wide, and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.
~ Pádraig Ó Tuama, from "Oremus," in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY
