The call of holiness is a call into the cloud of unknowing. The call to be holy is a call into the inner-most depths, to the inward center -- the stillpoint. Holiness calls us to be humble before God ... There is a saint, a holiness in each of us and the greatest journey is to discover that saint, that holiness within ... The prophet, the holy person, is the one who experiences within him or herself a presence that is so rich and meaningful that they are compelled to share it with others. The holy person, who receives the gift of him or herself, becomes almost intoxicated with the truth that everyone carries that hidden mystery ... The call of our day is to a higher consciousness, to respond to the work of God's love in us, not only in prayer, but in the kind of presence that we offer to our world and to our time, to the second creation that is always going on in us ...
Unless we are grounded in Mystery -- unless we experience both ourselves and others as co-participants in Mystery -- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time. Unless we have "new eyes" that can see others contemplatively, it is easy to miss the many-spendored thing that is our life together.
~ ~ from THE ART OF SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE by Carolyn Gratton thanks to June Schulte
Through contemplation you become a fountain that pours forth loving waters in all directions. Anyone who comes within the radius of that fountain -- old or young, rich or poor, man or woman, saint or sinner, friend or enemy -- gets splashed by love.
All that we love mirrors who we are. To be so imbued with love that we reflect it back with our whole being is a fundamental human longing ~ not only to love another man or woman, but actually to become love. When you become love you love everything around you. You greet every human being with love and draw love out of them. ~ You feel you are loved by God, so that God's love streams through you. Everything you do is marked by this love. You do your work for love ~ You do not have to create love in yourself. You have only to drink at the spring of divine love, which is bubbling up in you and is always enough.
There came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. ~ I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence ~ that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all: That the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love.
Love is the energy at the center of all life, the reality beneath our fears, the breath within the breath, the seed of all that grows. Loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all is interconnected and sacred. For most people, the journey toward love requires that we penetrate the armor around our hearts, feel our grief, and open ourselves to all our feelings. In doing so we become less and less dependent on others to validate our worth.
The divine love of God teaches us that fruitfulness is more important than success, that love of God is more important than the praise of people, that community is more important than individualism, and compassion is more important than competition.
When silence, wonder, adoration are diminished, so are human beings. We imagine we can get by on love and indeed we can. But love shrivels up and dies in the absence of contemplation and adoration. Love, human love, needs to be transfigured, transcended, if it is to be true to its deepest self.
The experience of the enormity we falteringly label "divine" is unconditional love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion ~ the sense of presence, of simply being, when investigated brings one toward the experience of the Beloved. At times the heart bursts into flame, the mind kind and clear. But usually it is just a simple spaciousness and ease that lets thoughts float in mercy and awareness and recognizes the evolutionary struggle in everyone they meet.
~ from EMBRACING THE BELOVED by Stephen and Ondrea Levine
