Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open. I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time. To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . . I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see. He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight. Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.
People today in a competitive corporate secular world are not encouraged to take up listening AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE. It requires tremendous life forces TO LISTEN, to become inwardly still, to suspend self-talk and arrogant critical and judgmental tendencies and to be present to another person or reality. ...The rudiments of spiritual (or other) knowledge may be received through the ear, but when these ideas penetrate the heart and are apprehended by the heart's eye, then HEARING BECOMES VISION.
~ Therese Schroeder-Scheker in SO THAT YOU MAY BE ONE by Joa Bolendas
The gift of love is nothing short of a miracle, and the same is true for the experience of the singer who works with prayer: sung prayer is one of the many ways in which love is made audible and brought into the fullness of life... In sung prayer, one must risk burning and one must risk soaring, nothing less. Whether one falls in love or whether one sings in love, surrender is to be and to radiate love. In the case of the musician, this is done through the medium of music. In the case of the truly musical person, this can even be achieved through a silence which radiates interior harmony and, by extension, brings peace to those surrounding them.
~ Therese Schroeder-Sheker in SO THAT YOU MAY BE ONE by Joa Bolendas
