May the blessings of the holiday Spirit be with each of you! Advent is a season to recall once again who we really are and to humbly accept it. We are human beings, whose privilege it is to have God as our destiny ... human beings, to whom God has given Divine Life from the beginning ... and, in the process of becoming fulfilled, we must pass under the fiery glance of God. Since we keep fighting off the approaching God, it is always God who must lay the groundwork for Love's approach, who must tame and train the wild human stallion for its advent destiny. And only when we live panting in the corral, do we open up to God's life-giving breath.
Newsletters
GREETINGS IN ABUNDANCE to all friends of Silence this harvest season! As we recollect the gifts of this year, may we also be mindful of the Source of our deepest blessings. Edith Stein, in "Thoughts", a compilation of some of her writings, reminds us of how every moment is to be a time for giving thanks:
GREETINGS and BLESSINGS! Are you prepared for Autumn?
DEAR FRIENDS OF SILENCE ... No need to say how vital is the call for prayer in these perilous days! A friend recently wrote that Friends of Silence reminds her that we are not as helpless or powerless as she was feeling. We can pray. We can radiate God's peace, love and harmony by the silent offering of our selves. And out of the Silence, we can trust that we shall hear what God may be calling us to do.
PEACE and BLESSINGS be with you! As we bask in the joy of summer activities and have the leisure to relax and re-create ourselves, may we also partake in the blessings of spiritual communion that come in the Silence. And, as we listen to the deep silence of our innermost spirit, the divine Spirit within, we may hear the voice of the silence, the sound of heavenly music.
May the flowers of May brighten your hearts! GREETINGS to all Friends of Silence. Recently, in recollecting personal Emmaus experiences, we found a paragraph in Douglas Steere's book, TOGETHER IN SOLITUDE, which beautifully describes that sense of being present to another that comes out of the deep silence of our hearts:
BLESSINGS to all Friends of Silence in this season of awakening growth, budding trees, rebirth, resurrection. In native American spirituality, Spring is a time of preparation to grow in the proper way toward illumination, wisdom and enlightenment ... a time to ready ourselves to soar as eagles!
SPRING GREETINGS! A friend of Silence recently wrote asking, "How does one learn to live in the moment, to be truly present to the now?" Besides suggesting Br. Lawrence's PRACTISING THE PRESENCE OF GOD, the following quote from an article, "Present to the Earth", by Pat Feldsien in Creation Magazine seems to the point:
WARM GREETINGS to all Friends of Silence! Every once in a while it seems good to give thanks to all the friends -- living and dead -- who offer the gift of their guidance and insights by way of writing. Books like THE CLOUD UNKNOWING ... one can only marvel and be grateful for the simple, radical and profound guidance that unknown author offers for the life of solitude, silence and prayer appropriate to all times:
BLESSINGS to all Friends of Silence as we enter this new year, this new decade! How good it is to be on a spiritual pilgrimage with so many who honor the need for silence and prayer in our times. And, how marvelous are the signs of hope for the people in so many countries today. Let us continue to offer our selves in the Silence for all our sisters and brothers who continue to live in oppression and injustice and for the healing of our planet Earth. May this be the decade that ushers in peace and justice for all ... the decade when love reigns in every heart!
Holiday Greetings to all Friends of Silence! May each one of you be blessed this holy season and throughout the new year with the joy ... peace ... gratitude ... and, love that arises from the inner sanctum of our hearts, where love is ever born anew. Two offerings from a new book, SONGS FOR EVERY SEASON, seem especially timely:
Greetings to all Friends of Silence in this season of giving thanks and of preparing our hearts once again to be open to and changed by a new infilling of love. As our calendars get filled and life's demands increase, how much more do we need to take time to be still and to remember who and whose we are. In the winter issue of Crossroads last year, Madeleine L'Engle reminded us:
Greetings to all Friends of Silence in this season of reaping the fruits of the harvest ... a good time to meditate on the seeds we sow in our hearts, on the fruits we offer the world, on what will be the harvest of our heart-seeds. And, 'tis always the season to stop and reflect on how much time we are giving to prayer in the Silence, which provides the fertile setting for the Life that is in us to grow.
Greetings to all Friends of Silence over these warm days of summer, the season that enables many to find special times for re-creation and soul-tending.
Greetings to all Friends of Silence as we celebrate the Summer Solstice and move into the season of new growth! A friend called recently to share her new insights on silence with us through Ingram Smith's book, TRUTH IS A PATHLESS LAND:
Greetings to all Friends of Silence as we celebrate the Summer Solstice and move into the season of new growth! A friend called recently to share her new insights on silence with us through Ingram Smith's book, TRUTH IS A PATHLESS LAND:
Greetings to all Friends of Silence -- and welcome to many new friends seeking to offer their gift of silence to our oh, so noisy world! One new friend came by way of a book this month: Jean Sulivan, who has been acclaimed as the most significant inspirational writer in France since George Bernanos, shares his spiritual journey in MORNING LIGHT:
Spring greetings to Friends of Silence! Each new season offers a call to dive deep enough into the calm depths of our heart to reach the serene Silent One. In this way we gift the world with an inner stillness and silence that helps to keep the balance and renew the earth.
Warm greetings to all Friends of Silence this month of Valentine love, celebrated so commercially, and the beginning of Lent -- the journey to the Passion of Christ, celebrated in the hermitage of each hear where Love abides. While Valentine's Day invites us to express love and affection to special people in our lives, Lent calls us to reflect, pray and respond to Love that lives in the suffering world. One cannot be a contemplative and be spared the Cross ... the cries of the poor, the anguish of injustice and oppression, the agonies of those afflicted by war, disease, famine, disasters, the raping of our mother earth ... One only has to read the daily news to encounter over and over again the Cross.
May the blessing of Advent be with each one of you during this Holyday season and all through the new year - 1989!
Greetings to all Friends of Silence in this month where we celebrate all the Saints and all the Souls. November is also the time to remember that we are all called to live with grateful hearts. And our Silence is often where the fullness of our thanksgiving is most keenly experienced.
Greetings to all friends of Silence, to each one of you who is a fragment of the word of God. Every one of us is a thirst for meaning, for ultimate value, for truth. Each one of us is a readiness to love, to follow, to give ourself to that which fills and completes the movement of our being.
Autumn greetings! Harvest time -- the season for gathering the fruits of the earth ... a time when the words of blessing during Mass come so alive they seem to expand and encompass all the world. Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have the wheat of the field ... the fruit of the vine. You have made us co-creators with you giving us opportunities to grow in love, to bring peace and justice to the world, to feed the hungry and to heal the planet. We are graced with forgiveness ... we are blessed with hearts that unite us to one another. Blessed are you Creator God, you who give each one of us the light to be ourselves! May we be led deeper into the Silence, that we might come into full harmony, to full union with the Heart of our hearts.
Blessings to all Friends of Silence in these last two months of the Marian Year! Mary, beautiful model of holy receptivity, knew the secret of true silence ... she treasured all her memories faithfully and pondered them in her heart. She knew that to live in faith means to live in silence. Her very being is in unity with the hiddeness of a great Silence. Yet to know this Silence, she must depend on her own inner silence ... her own mystery. Mary shows us that to reverence that Silence is to be ever expectant to the divine Word welling up from within us. Blessed are those who await in faith for the Word to be dropped into the silence of their own well.
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.
Happy Pentecost season to all friends of Silence! And what gift of the Holy Spirit are you praying to receive over the next thirty weeks -- piety ... counsel ... courage ... fear of the Lord ... knowledge ... understanding ... or, wisdom? There is so much that the Spirit wants to give to us in order that we might die to our inner fears, that we might give birth to our hidden selves which have not yet risen. Our homes, our cities, our countries, our world are in such need of these gifts today. And all that is given to us is for us to use to enrich one another ... to enrich all of creation.
Just as the seed given to Mary by the Holy Spirit brought forth the spiritual birth of Love to our world, the Holy Spirit in every moment awaits our fiat, our total YES to God's word in us, so that the inner womb of our hearts may receive the seed and give birth to that same Love.
Greetings to friend of Silence around the world -- and, welcome to all those who have recently indicated their interest in and commitment to allowing enough silence in their lives for the Word to be heard!