You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through. Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day. Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you.
~ from TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US by John O'Donohue
The person who loves never abandons contemplation. On the contrary, s/he alone thirsts for it in the right spirit ... God gives Love to those in prayer, and the more s/he loves others, the better s/he can understand. Being filled with God's love, one is capable of a new love for one another -- a joyful and self-forgetting love. Love brings contemplation itself into the mystery of change. It is no longer a neutral point from which the transformations of love are beheld; it is carried away in the flood of the love which is ever the same and ever new, forever changing.
Silence is the home of the word. Silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word. We can even say that words are meant to disclose the mystery of the silence from which they come ... Words can only create communion and thus new life when they embody the silence from which they emerge ... Thus silence is the mystery of the future world. It keeps us pilgrims and prevents us from becoming entangled in the cares of this age. It guards the fire of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. It allows us to speak a word that participates in the creative and recreative power of God's own Word.
When one says to the great Thinker: "Here is one of your thoughts: I am thinking it now," that is a prayer -- a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.
To pray is never to get over the wonder of being born, of being alive. To pray is to live in the profound gratitude that no matter what happens, we're ahead. To pray is to be in reverence, in awe, in joy with some moment of each day. There are no perfect days, but there is a beautiful moment in each day that draws us into prayer ... consciously or unconsciously.
~ from GATHERING THE FRAGMENTS by Edward J. Farrell
Summer greetings to all friends of Silence! May each one of you enjoy a time of recreation ... re-creation ... this season both outwardly and inwardly. And, what season of Silence are you experiencing in your prayer life? Winter Solstice sometimes seems like a deep abyss where the Word dwells in us unspoken ... Spring Silence brings an expectancy, an active waiting, for the Word in us ... in Summer Silence, the Word wells up -- growing in us, challenging us, changing us, nurturing us into new life, into new creations ... while Autumn Silence seems the time to reap the harvest of the Word in us, to reflect on the fruits the Word has borne. It seems good to share our reflections and experiences of the Silence that we might come to know one another and grow in Silence together.
O Lord, the Author and Persuador of peace, love and goodwill, soften hearts that are hard and steely ... warm hearts frozen by fear, that we may wish well to one another, and may be true followers of the Way of Love. And give us grace even now to show forth that heavenly life, wherein fear does not abide -- but peace and love on all hands, one toward another. Amen.
