Quiet, contemplative prayer happens when we are still and open ourselves to the Spirit working secretly in us, when we heed the psalmist's plea: "be still and know that I am God." These are times when we trustingly sink into God's formless hands for cleansing, illumination, and communion. Sometimes spontaneous sounds and words come through us in such prayer, but more often we are in a state of quiet appreciation, simply hollowed out for God. At the gifted depth of this kind of prayer we pass beyond an image of God and beyond any image of self. We are left in a mutual raw presence. Here we realize that God and ourselves quite literally are more than we can imagine.
True integrity grows from an awareness that we can stand in the honest
light of God's unconditional love and be seen in our truth. Integrity,
like a muscle, needs to be worked and stretched. As we sit in the center
of integrity, our heart and God's heart beat as one. The transparent light
of truth filters through, embracing every cell of our being, and we are
able to see and speak more clearly. Then, little by little, as the layers
of lies and pretending are stripped aside, a genuine simplicity remains.
Freed of grandiosity and illusion, we stand radiant and unencumbered in
truth as we claim our own voice with which we dare speak our truth and
live with integrity.
