God hears only the beating of human hearts and what rests within them. It is the compassion that comes out of the experience of oneness and holds the world in infinitely tender love that speaks efficaciously to Divine Creation Love and alters the course of history. It is not some beautiful thought or insightful idea, but being with the groanings of the earth and all its peoples that makes our prayer. It is only our living out of the Center of unity and oneness that make a difference in the redeeming of the earth.
The soul of each one of us has its destination, and that is the Sacred Heart that draws us to Itself. What is true of each one of us is true of all the world. Walt Whitman in his strong, urgent way cries:
One thought ever at the face— That in the Divine Ship, the world breasting time and space, All peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, Are bound to the same destination.
Some such thought as this is surely necessary for the bare subsistence of a soul, for our soul cannot live without the sense of a destination ... the destination of Divine Love.
The soul possesses an ineffable intelligence that cannot be controlled. Like mist, the soul cannot be forced, directed, or squeezed into a box where it does not belong. It cannot even be fully seen or perceived, for the soul is a timeless, feathered thing that flies in more worlds than one.
Each of us possesses a soul, but we do not prize our soul as creatures made in the Divine image deserve, and so we do not understand the great secrets which they contain.
What would become of our souls if they lacked the bread of earthly reality to nourish them, the wine of created beauty to intoxicate them, the discipline of human struggle to make them strong? What puny powers and bloodless hearts Your creatures would bring to You were they to cut themselves off prematurely from the providential setting in which You placed them!
~ from HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE by Teillard de Chardin
Educate your inner being in all aspects of life. Keep to the order you learned during your schooling. You did not begin all of a sudden to grasp the higher subjects; you started by learning the alphabet. The same applies to your soul. It is not good for it to strive toward exalted feats until it becomes familiar with the spiritual alphabet: humility and obedience. Let the whole of your life become a continuous prayer.
The soul seeks to serve; it inspires the personality to serve in particular ways and means. As that happens we become less and less interested in the personality aspect and more and more concerned in altruistic service for the benefit of all. The soul has no sense of being an individual, separate self and knows nothing of separation. It sees only the whole and itself in relation to the whole.
Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter now: the frozen misery Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move: The thunder is the thundering of the floes, The thaw, the flood, the upstart spring. Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never to leave us til we take The longest stride of soul we ever took. Affairs are now soul-size. The enterprise Is exploration into God.
~ from "A Sleep of Prisoners" in SELECTED PLAYS by Christopher Fry
There are seasons in our souls: times of withering, times of coldness, times of renewal, times of sun and light. May the force which drives nature to its fulfillment be brought forth in us, too. Within each of us is the power to love and care awaiting our wills and our acts to bring it forth. Let us be instruments of the power oflove which comes through us but not from us, the power which waits for us to bring it forth.
~ from CYCLES OF REFLECTION by Robert E. Senghas, thanks to Pat Habif
