Listening to the rain, time disappears....This forest is textured with different kinds of time, as the surface of the pool is dimpled with different kinds of rain. Fir needles fall with the high-frequency hiss of rain, branches fall with the bloink of big drops, and trees fall with a rare but thunderous thud. Rare, unless you measure time like a river...
...Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop. The drop swells on the tip of a cedar and I catch it on my tongue like a blessing.
The time of busyness does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while serving persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees in prayer.
~ from THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD by Brother Lawrence
I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in the Holy Presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them and prevent their appearance to others.
~ from PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD by Brother Lawrence
