A paragraph from Frederick Franck's new book, A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS, which he graciously sent to Friends of Silence, also speaks to this theme:
D. T. Suzuki wrote that the spiritual life is pain raised above the level of mere sensation. 'Spirituality, born from life-pain, is that specifically human impulse from delusion to the really-Real within and outside of ourselves,' which characterizes the maturation of the human inner process: the thrust towards, and the commitment to, the Real ... Authentic spirituality is intimately related to firsthand, direct experiencing. It may mature through various disciplines, as for instance structured meditation and verbalized prayer. To live in radical openness to pure experiencing in the kitchen, bedroom, subway, newspaper, that is: to everyday life, inside as well as around oneself may, however be the equivalent of both formal meditation and verbal prayer. It is it he finding of one's path without being 'bamboozled, confused, side-tracked.'
~ from A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS by Frederick Franck
The peacemakers are called children of God, because that is precisely what they are: the conscious offspring of the Creator. The peacemakers are men and women who have adventured down the avenues of healing and caught the current of their divine identity. The children of God share the spirits and purposes of God. The peacemakers have internalized the seven steps to wholeness outlined in the Beatitudes: they recognized their weaknesses; they long for what they need to change; they are gentle, unpretentious and nonviolent; they pursue right livelihood; they have compassion for others; their motivation is pure; they offer unconditional love to all.
The child that is born is an open bridge to the unconscious, to the unmanifest, expanded multidimensional soul. Babies are so magnificent. They're always staring off into space, into the eyes of their beloveds, of their companion souls, of God. We have all heard it said that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and the soul is very present in children... As we touch the child inside ourselves, we begin to shift from the emotional body's experience to the deeper, more profound love of our cosmic self. The child reminds us that God laughs.
~ from ECSTASY IS A NEW FREQUENCY by Chris Griscom
Guess who I am?
Guess who it is
that loves you --
you, who were the breaking of spring
in my heart
before the beginning of time;
guess who I am,
You, in the womb
before the day star I have begotten you.
~ from CARYLL HOUSELANDER by Maisie Ward with thanks to Alice Somers
The carefree hearts of children reflect qualities that are divine by their restless pranks and blissful for their innocence. It is for us to see how far we can make use of this "Divinity" in ourselves, expressed through the child-God.
To respond authentically to what we encounter: this is how we all reacted as children, before we were punished or shamed for doing so. To respond authentically to what we encounter -- how hard it is for adults to do something that sounds so simple.
To do so, we only have to be inwardly attentive, we only have to know what we feel, we only have to be able to respond with an innocent, spontaneous, instinctive receptivity that is a finely attuned discriminating consciousness, a body and soul reaction to the world around us.
Once, in the early days of my desolution, I thought I might learn to write in the language of the spiders. Now, led by the Child, I am on my way to it. The true language, I know now, is that speech in silence in which we first communicated, the Child and I, in the forest, when I was asleep. It is the language I used in my childhood, and some memory, intangibly there by not quite audible, of our marvelous conversations, comes to me again at the very edge of sleep, a language my tongue almost rediscovers and which would, I believe, reveal the secrets of the universe to me the language whose every syllable is a gesture of reconciliation. I spoke it in my childhood. I must discover it again.
