Transfiguring experience is not granted to people as an easy and ready access to glory. Only in going up the mountain, rejecting and being rejected by the world, identifying with those who are most broken, does one encounter the divine refulgence...Our substitution of consumer tourism for pilgrimage, of canned experience for life-changing risk, is symptomatic of our inability to entertain in any way the reality of our own transfiguration.
~ from THE SOLACE OF FIERCE LANDSCAPES by Belden C. Lane
Looking at me in the gentlest manner, the hermit said, "You are afraid, aren't you? You don't need to be afraid." His power lay in that he had no power. He merely looked deeply into my soul.
A tension broke within me, and much to my horror I began to weep. The tears quietly drained the hurt and terror from me and replaced it with peace.
"We are all deaf. The way of emptiness teaches us to hear...One day you will know that the emptiness is your friend."
~ from STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS by Michael D. O'Brien
I walked through the birches by the river today. Overwhelming! The earth is stripped down to simple designs. The land has become a visual haiku. Sun on the fretwork of twigs. Blood droplets of rose hips clinging to the bushes. The chatter of the creek against trimmings of ice. The skiff of snow. My breath a white cloud like a departing soul... I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.
~ from STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS by Michael D. O'Brien
