Blessings of the New Year, the beginning of our 17th year of radiating silence out to the world. Let us envision our silences as energetic webs of Light penetrating the darkness as it blankets the globe. And, in the Silence may the Light ever illuminate our souls!
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batfly,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I was not light myself, I knew that, but I bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel the light rising, spreading, giving form. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from the outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness . The seeing eye was in me.
Fountain of Light: from that light flows the light that is essential for the very existence of life, and the light of understanding in which the point of life, its meaning, its purpose and direction, can, within our limited capacity, be grasped. Divine light, not artificial, not intermittent, seasonal, or subject to power cuts. But issuing from God as from a fountain ceaselessly playing, springing up endlessly and joyously, irradiating the uttermost parts of the universe, suffusing the darkest corners of the human heart.
The ancient hieroglyph for adoration is a gesture of opening that signified both the receipt of divine grace and the offering of the self. When a man or woman stands before God with arms opened wide, the heart is vulnerable to penetration. We allow God to slay us, to kill that which is "other" in us, then to enter and inhabit our form in order for God to know the Divine through us, to resurrect and reconstruct us as changed creatures, as bodies more fully filled with the Light of God.
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God. It is in everybody and if we could see it we would see those billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun.
Throughout my whole life, during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.
The light of splendor shines in the middle of the night. Who can see it? A heart which has eyes and watches.
I wish I could show you
when you are lonely or in darkness
the astonishing
light of your own being.
The Light that flows through your system is Universal Energy. It is the Light of the Universe. You give Light form. What you feel, what you think, how you behave, what you value and how you live your life reflect the way you are shaping the Light that is flowing through you. They are thought forms, the feeling forms and the outer forms that you have given to Light. They reflect the configuration of your personality, your space-time being.
Once when we were walking together, I saw Teilhard fall to his knees just to study a stone. He held it up to the light and ran his fingers carefully over its surfaces, as if he were trying to read the pattern of matter as a language. Watching him that day in the blessed silence of the field, I saw a man who could see light in the very earth under his feet. Because of him I learned not to hate our enemy, and joined with him in the work of serving those who were in need. And sometimes at sunset when the sky was bright with amazing color, I tried to look beyond the trenches — as he did so often — and see the light in this world of ours.
I said to the one who stood at the Gate of the Year,
Give me a light that I might go safely out into the darkness.
The gatekeeper replied,
Go out into the darkness and put your hand
into the hand of God.
That shall be more to you than a light and safer than a known way.
The light that shines in the eye
is really the light of the heart.
The light that fills the heart
is the light of God, which is pure
and separate from the light of
intellect and senses.
There is a place in everyone that can carry the light. God has made it this way. God has not only given us the chance to carry the light, but has made it possible for us to kindle and strengthen the light in one another, passing the light along. This way God's light will shine forever in this world.
Before the restoration, it was the colors I watched, blue, red, yellow, green, pink; the architecture, the meadow, the hedges, the water. Now, what I see is light. White light. Color has been absorbed into form, Form is in the service of surprise. It is the light, the throbbing illumination, glowing on the horizon, rippling in the waters, blowing through the grasses, that touches my lips. Something has been set in MOTION.
The oak tree in full foliage praises the Creator, but in order to become the oak tree, the acorn has to open in the dark. Its roots have to reach deep into the earth as its branches stretch toward the light. There in the dark the shell has to crack. Only when I let go of my protective shell, when I find the crack makes me vulnerable, that opens me to the Other, only then will the night be radiant, only then will the dark be light... The spark is in everyone's soul: the spark of our Creator shining in the dark. This spark is ours to tend, to take care of until it flares into a brilliant flame, lit by God.