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.
Each individual who conquers the panic of their nightmare, who faces up to the terror of evil, and thereby discovers a goodness which heals and cannot be destroyed, brings fresh love into the world. The deepening of their capacity for love will first heal their own wound, and then go further, extending its gentle influence upon family, friends, and out to the world.
Listen, my heart: love God ceaselessly As the fish loveth water: The deeper the water The happier and more tranquil the fish. God alone knoweth the suffering Of fish separated from the waters.
The state of love communion is simply the state of joining within with one another, heart to heart.It is an experience of the other as myself. When I meet you in my own heart, there is nowhere else I have to go. As long as we both remain in our hearts, our joining continues. When we move out of our hearts, we simply move away. And coming together does not mean reaching out after you, but reaching within myself to find the place where we are connected.
She loved Botswana, which was good place, and she loved those with whom she lived and worked. She had so much love to give – she had always felt that – and now there was someone to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable – this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.
~ from IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES by Alexander McCall Smith
Each person who enters our life, every experience we have, is a teacher. Some things we learn amaze us, some trouble us. Everyone we have loved has become a part of us ... And no relationship created in love can ever die.
