The greatest gift of all is an awakened, unconstrained, limitless heart. It takes you out of your skin and fills you with such compassion that, in the words of one of my Bushmen teachers, "It even makes you love the man who stole your wife." I have no doubt that the Bushmen doctors of the Kalahari hold the most important answer to the world's present state of crisis, terror, and madness. It is not found in any defense budget, technological development, or politician's deal. It is found in each and every one of our hearts. It's the oldest news that can set us free and it is found when one surrenders to the hot, sweaty, weeping steam of love, the love that reveals the ropes that take us straight to the Big God.
~ from "Dancing with the Kalahari Bushmen" by Bradford Keeney in Spirituality and Health, June 2003
There is something in me that is not content to hang about directionless along the edge of the path ... A thirst in me so deep it will move aside the rocks, seeking moisture. There is a yearning that is intense in its desire to put God first.
It may take a lifetime, but I have no doubt this unnameable Mystery within, the seed that fell at the beginning of creation, will finally crowd out the thorns.
Yes, there is One who believes in me enough to continue singing up the country of my heart.
Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all its creatures the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony. In O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather reminds us of our need to believe in the good soil of our lives, to do what we can to wake it up and then to wait.
"The land had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still."
We can learn the same lesson from sitting still with the land of the heart. It, too, has its little jokes. We think it is poor soil because we don't know how to work it. When we learn to do our inner work, it will wake up and work itself. All we need is a PATIENT WAITING and a TENDER ABIDING.
