For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit lost in a shaft of sunlight,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline,
thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood,
is incarnation.
Quotations
The Dry Salvages
We realize ourselves, when we discover God. We discover a reality that is identical to ourselves, although a realm that transcends us infinitely ... a reality from which we are estranged, but from which we can never be separated ... In reality, in our search to know God, we realize our true selves.
Fragments of My Life
So often, we forget how to pray. We forget that there must be a time when we are silent so we can hear what God wants to say to us. Yes, my friends, we must pray, the prayer of two people in love with each other who cease to talk. Their silence speaks. This is the kind of prayer that the poustinia will teach you. Resting in God's love, you will understand the unity God wishes for you. Then as a pilgrim, you will go forth and shout and sing about this to all peoples.
Two people in love! When you are in love with God you will understand that God loved you first. You will enter into a deep and mysterious silence and in that silence become one with the Absolute. Your oneness with God will overflow to all your brothers and sisters.
My friends, this is the kind of prayer we need today. If you pray like this you will be overshadowed by the wings of a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. On those wings your prayer of silence will be lifted into the hands of the Woman Wrapped in Silence, and she will lay it at the feet of the Most Holy Trinity. The answer today to the salvation of the world lies in prayer.
The Possible Human
If we are called to be observers and contemplators, we are also called to nourish, to be nourishers, not consumers. Only a nourisher knows when to stop, not to overeat, overindulge, to draw back. To say no. I have a friend who has a coffee mug with the inscription: DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE ... We often underestimate those who stand there. But I have had to do some new thinking about all this, as I have had to do some new thinking about the sound of the tree falling in the forest. If we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation, we are likely to get stuck in one position, and to be fearful of changing it, and so we cling, unable to laugh at ourselves and move on.
And, if we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation and find time for solitude, we miss so much along the way. Admiral Byrd's journal is filled with the fruits that silence brings:
I took my daily walk at 4 p.m. today in -89 degrees of frost ... I paused to listen to the silence ... The day was dying, the night being born -- but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence -- a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres...
In an Eastern Rose Garden
The ears of those whose hearts have listened to the word of God have first accomplished stillness in their life. And what an atmosphere such persons can produce, what effect their presence has; it is more than healing, more than medicine. One with a perfectly stilled and comforted and rested mind will at once raise up another who is going through distress or restlessness or pains or ill-temper or worry or anxiety. The very presence of one whose mind is stilled gives such hope, such inspiration, such sympathy, such power and life. All the heavenly properties run so smoothly and freely from those whose minds are stilled that their words, their voice, their presence all react upon the minds of others; and, as they still their minds, so their very presence becomes healing.
Creative Prayer
It is upon our willingness to listen and hear God speak that our prayer life from first to last depends.
Open Mind, Open Heart
The root of prayer is interior silence. We may think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words, but this is only one expression. Deep prayer is the laying aside of thoughts. It is the opening of mind and heart, body and feelings -- our whole being -- to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond words, thought, and emotions. We do not resist them or suppress them. We accept them as they are and go beyond them, not by effort, but by letting them all go by. We open our awareness to the Ultimate Mystery whom we know by faith is within us, closer than choosing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing -- closer than consciousness itself. the Ultimate Mystery is the ground in which our being is rooted, the source from whom our life emerges at every moment.
The Last Barrier
Before I left him, he said that we should pray. I tried to explain to him that I did not understand prayer, that I could not see the meaning of it. "Then pray that you will understand," he said impatiently. "Devotion is necessary in our path. The trouble with you is that you don't believe in God. You only think you do. If you knew what I know then you would pray ... a prayer beyond form. And where is your love and gratitude? How many times a day do you remember to say thank you? Until you can be truly grateful, you will always be in separation from God ... The prayer of which I speak is the prayer of your heart, the state where all life has become a prayer. Whether God comes with a thorn to wake you up or as the gentle wind, it is necessary that you are grateful and that you acknowledge God. For praise and gratitude are like the two hands of prayer. A great Sufi once said, 'Make God a reality and God will make you the truth.' Begin now. Do you not want to meet God face to face?"
Coming of the Cosmic Christ
Have you ever been "stricken with silence"? If so, you have tasted the ineffable; you have had a mystical experience. Silence is too often defined as "the absence of something" when it is much more than that. Silence is also a search for something, a search for the depths, for the source. Many of the mystical awakenings experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts in space have been triggered by the cosmic silence they have encountered there. Similar things happen to persons swimming in the depths of the sea or spelunking in the caves of Mother Earth. Silence moves people. That is why it is so essential to meditation practices, including the art of listening to our images. Being, one might say, is silent. We must embrace silence in order to experience being. Then -- and only then -- does it speak deep truths to us. As Rilke says: "Being-silent. Who keeps innerly silent, touches the roots of speech."
Snowy Earth Comes Gliding
Native American Indians value silence and recommend it in stories and pointed sayings ... "Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf" ... "No flies come into a closed mouth" ... and a clause in an Indian prayer, "Oh my Grandfather, may I lose no good opportunity to hold my tongue." They feel comfortable in silence, and are often irritated, or at best amused, by our "windmill machine" of constant chatter. Silence, "going behind the blanket," removing oneself from useless or annoying contact are highly developed techniques, second nature to the Indian way.
The Education of Little Tree
Granma said all Cherokees had a secret place. She told me she had one and Granpa had one. She said she reckined most everybody had a secret place, but she couldn't be certain, as she had never made inquiries of it. Granma said it was necessary. Which made me feel right good about having one ... Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind. Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them ... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger'n a hickor'nut.
The Pearl of Great Price
Silence is its own reward: we do not look for any "sign" of God's presence, but as we grow in faith, we become increasingly aware of the wordless dialogue proceeding deep within us. This is the silent conversation with God that warms the heart and mobilizes the powers of the mind and spirit which we are all endowed, but which largely remain in abeyance in everyday life, until we are enabled to strike a deeper note of awareness. In other words, the effect of God's grace shows itself as we give of ourselves by what we are given, but, far from dwelling on it, we stride forward in resolution to give what we have to those around us ... There can be no effective journey on the path to the pearl of great price, until we are so inwardly posed that our attention and resolution remain in control even when the world is collapsing around us. For, real prayer -- the still point of our inner being -- never ceases ... The person who flows out from the still point is indeed an instrument of God's peace.
Free to be Nothing
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 ...
In His Presence
May each one you meet along life's path feel through you a great inner stillness and reserve, a great strength. Then when you speak, your words will carry power to those who hear. Allow the words you speak to well up from your inner being and see how little your physical self is drained. In using only necessary words and words of truth, you are known as a "Silent One." Love will flow through you from that silence and others will go forth full of the love you have given to them.
Primary Speech
God answers us in the flesh of our experiences -- physical, emotional, intellectual, imaginative, spiritual. Prayers change us when we are answered by an expansion of self, by more self made more accessible to us. The words with which we pray to God lead us into ourselves, to hear that primary speech so actively discoursing within ourselves. New thoughts come to mind; we see new communications between things we were thinking. New ideas of what we should be doing spring up; a new willingness to do what we are doing arises. Old duties, as regular and onerous as daily housekeeping or office tasks, seem to fall into place and become less weighty and preoccupying. Energy to improvise and imagine different courses of action and ways of seeing things comes to us.
One way prayers are answered is through this enlivening of self. We feel not only more alive and real but more our own selves. As we expand, life expands ... the space of our being seems to become larger and more porous, more open and less buttressed ... we pay more attention to our own reactions, which now indicate to us what to move on to next -- where to seek forgiveness from someone, where to keep silent; where to offer help to someone, where not to interfere ... we become more grateful and see better how much there is to be thankful for ... we reach for the other and are given more of our self ... we reach into our self and are given more of others.
I chose you and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last ...
A Little Compendium on That Which Matters
A paragraph from Frederick Franck's new book, A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS, which he graciously sent to Friends of Silence, also speaks to this theme:
D. T. Suzuki wrote that the spiritual life is pain raised above the level of mere sensation. 'Spirituality, born from life-pain, is that specifically human impulse from delusion to the really-Real within and outside of ourselves,' which characterizes the maturation of the human inner process: the thrust towards, and the commitment to, the Real ... Authentic spirituality is intimately related to firsthand, direct experiencing. It may mature through various disciplines, as for instance structured meditation and verbalized prayer. To live in radical openness to pure experiencing in the kitchen, bedroom, subway, newspaper, that is: to everyday life, inside as well as around oneself may, however be the equivalent of both formal meditation and verbal prayer. It is it he finding of one's path without being 'bamboozled, confused, side-tracked.'
The Practice of the Presence of God
I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in the Holy Presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them and prevent their appearance to others.
Juniper
Wouldn't you know it? Last autumn I became a seed and fell into the ground again. That is why I haven't written for a while. How could it always is in the soil. And dark. You can't imagine! But it doesn't matter whether there is light or not because you have no eyes. You feel all alone, and you don't know there are other seeds around you who are also trying to see. Then a little shoot begins to grow out of the top of your head and it starts to feel its way upward through what seems like all the dirt in the world. The ascent is long and hard; you believe it will never end. Then one day in May you break out and into the sun and air. Your eyes are restored, and, when you look around, there are poppies everywhere, all celebrating their own resurrection. What a feeling! I was just beginning to enjoy my own red blossom when a cold September wind stole into the valley and I returned to the ground. Now spring seems an impossible flower. I would surely lose heart if Jesus hadn't told us we are all seeds and that someday we will rise permanently and fall will be no more.
By Way of Pain
"Tending soul requires patient and sensitive listening to inner needs and wants: resting when we need to rest, rather than when convention or habit dictates; respecting our desires for solitude even though others may consider it antisocial; weeping when there are tears to weep. With each compassionate and understanding response to our needs, with each authentic expression of who we are, our capacity to recognize and respect our nature increases. And inasmuch as and only to the extent to which we can acknowledge, allow and serve our own souls, we can acknowledge, allow and serve the souls of others.
Like a musical instrument, the soul and its physical form can express the symphonies of Self -- the songs of God -- only as sensitively as its own degree of delicacy and refinement permits. For just as a Stradivarius allows levels of a Bach violin sonata to be heard which cannot be heard on a beginner's violin, so a finely wrought soul allows more of God's voice to be amplified than one unrefined by spiritual and psychological work."
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
Molchanie
Those whom God calls into silence will enter a vortex which will shatter them into little pieces. Looking here and there you will see fragments of a human being. You will behold you own fragmentation and wonder why you do not die. I do not know why. God knows. But in silence, God will gather together your fragments. And when you emerge from the sea of silence you will be thunder. And this thunder will pass beyond the galaxies as if you were a bird sent forth to preach the gospel to the whole universe ... People will not know where the thunder is coming from, but it will be coming from your heart. God has entered it through silence. Having put together your fragmented self, God now tells you to go on a pilgrimage to preach the gospel in a silence that is more powerful than any words you have ever spoken. For, silence is more powerful than any words, except one: the Word. It is by entering the Word that to some the gift of utter silence, and therefore complete speech, is given."
The Well and the Cathedral
We go inward,
Into the depth of our life
Moving through the center point
Into the well of our Self
As deeply
As fully
As freely as we can.
Through the center point
Exploring the deep places
Exploring the deep places
In the silence ... In the Silence.
Rain ... for the eighth straight day ... rain. She was beginning to find the enforced confinement more bitter than sweet. Freedom of movement was as dear to her as freedom of thought, even though both were often misunderstood by others. The rain limited her general habit of walking daily -- hikes that cleared her mind to receive guidance and centered her for authentic living. Rain ... it also cleansed memories and scars of past mistakes.
He came home to a testy woman -- wife in his perception, companion in her dreams. His had been a lean day of purpose, distractions met with sighs of unacknowledged anger. They met at the door with a perfunctory kiss and he began to grumble recitals of a misspent day. She felt constrained and controlled by an unspoken inner fear of screaming ... STOP! Let's not talk, but simply listen to the rain.
And he, being sensitive to her psyche, felt the contained rejection and talked -- frenetically spewing words toward an unreceptive ear. She heard him not; she had tuned into a void to avoid an unrelated sharing.
Out of the rain came rumblings of thunder. The storm approached rapidly and with uncontrolled savagery. The light dimmed ... then went out as the next crash followed the flash of lightning too close to ignore. He took her hand and led her to the sofa, as much for his comfort as hers. They sat without speaking and listened to the storm raging outwardly, that storm which each had felt within. As the storm abated -- seeming to have spent itself in calamitous outburst -- the subdued pair continued in a silence that radiated an envelope of peace. They were still sitting when the light came back on.
She was the first to speak. From that deep place touched in the Silence, she said simply and quietly, "Yes ... shall we take a walk before we eat?"
He assented with a kiss and a smile which conveyed more than a plethora of words.
Truth is a Pathless Land
... as happened a few months ago, the old question of what to do returned. Is there anything to be done? Anything I can do? I put it directly to myself -- aloud: What ... can ... I ... do? I listened. No answer. I waited. Nothing came ... nothing. The emptiness remained. Then, in the silence, quite suddenly, came the realization that the wholeness that I had been seeking and not finding was present -- not "out there" in time and space, not somewhere else, but intrinsically here and now. Silence danced through me. I saw that when the brain-mind stops churning and is still, the longed for blissful dimension is already here ... All this was seen because consciousness was not occupied. That was all. A thrilling aliveness had become a dynamic emptiness that is not void -- space filled with energy ... (with ecstasy)!
There must be a time of day when we who make plans forget our plans and act as if we had no plans at all. There must be a time of day that when we have to speak, we fall very silent ... and our mind forms no more propositions, and we ask: Did they have a meaning? There must be a time when we who pray go to our prayer as if it were the first time in our life that we had ever prayed; when we of resolutions put our resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and we learn a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.
Taste of Silence
In every ministry, one is giving something to someone else; in shared silence, one is giving oneself. Sharing interior silence is the giving of one's inmost being to another. When one does this in a group, everyone shares everybody else's level or degree of interior silence. Thus, everyone in the group tends to move to a deeper place than when alone and relying on one's own limited experience.
This is especially the case when silence is penetrated by the gift of interior silence. Then silence is an encounter with the divine presence within. One rests in the conviction of faith and in peace that transcends joy and sorrow. It brings one in face-to-face contact with God, so to speak, a being-to-being exchange.
One who speaks from the lips
chatters ...
One who speaks from an empty mind
adds confusion to discord ...
One who speaks from a full mind
feeds the minds of others ...
One who speaks from the heart
wins the confidence of humanity ...
But one who speaks from the soul
heals the heartbreaks of the world
and feeds hungry, starving souls ...
Do not move
in order to touch me,
for I am stillness itself.
Do not be drawn
in many directions
in order to take hold of me;
I am unity itself.
Stop the movement,
unify diversity,
and you will surely reach me,
who long ago reached you.
More Than Words
God, our creator and sustainer,
you loved us long before we knew ourselves to be lovable and love us still.
Give us, we pray,
a greater awareness of your love for all people,
and a confidence in the action of your grace
in us and in all creation.
Inspire us with a greater sensitivity
to the poor and oppressed.
Give us the courage to act on their behalf.
We praise you today
for your mysterious ways among us:
for your presence in the midst of human affairs
and your seeming absence.
By the power of your Spirit,
may we grow in the truth that impels us to act justly,
and thus give expression to the compassion
of the One who is Love. Amen.
A Listening Heart
By listening deeply to the message of any given moment, I shall be able to tap the very Source of Meaning and to realize the unfolding meaning of my life. To listen in this way means to listen with one's heart, with one's whole being. The heart stands for that center of our being at which we are truly "together." Together with ourselves, not split up into intellect, will, emotions, into mind and body. Together with all other creatures, for the heart is that realm where I am paradoxically not only most intimately myself, but most intimately united with all. Together with God, the source of life, the life of my life, welling up in the heart. In order to listen with my heart, I must return again and again to my heart through a process of centering, through taking things to heart. Listening with my heart I will find meaning.
God cannot catch us unless we stay in the silent room of our hearts.
The Experience of Praying
"What begins in a search through nothingness for God and for meaning ends in friendship. In our surrender we come to know God as friend: 'I shall not call you servants anymore ... I call you friends.' Without friendships something is dead within us. Just as a healthy openness, frankness, sincerity and an attitude of respect are fundamental as a foundation for prayer, these qualities are also developed in friendship. For deep friendship brings an empathetic knowledge of the other, an understanding that comes from love and compassion.
Friends grow together ... challenge each other. Friends have the power to draw the best out of us. To have formed a few very deep friendships is the blessing of a lifetime. Silence offers us the luxury of deepening our friendship with God ... of knowing how dearly we are loved by God. The Beloved will speak to us within our self-understanding, love us within our self-acceptance and celebrate with us when we celebrate with our friends."
Even with "nothing" seems to be happening in our prayer-life, we can trust that in the Silence we are growing in contentment, serenity, understanding, empathy, friendliness and concern.
The Song of the Bird
I used to be stone deaf. I would see people stand up and go through all kinds of gyrations. They called it dancing. It looked absurd to me -- until one day I heard the music!
A Journey in the Company of God
A new vision comes when I can stop looking into the blazing sun that blinds me, and I learn to focus more on deeper, more intimate and hidden beauties and light. It's then that I begin to feel a taste and a hunger for a new love and a new vision that calls me further on. It's then that I can begin to hear a quiet gentle voice within calling to me, inviting me, telling me that I have an immense value, because I am loved and wanted -- not for what I possess or what I have achieved, but simply for what I am. And what I am is this unique person, quite unlike anyone else, with my own story and my own very special light shining in my eyes. This uniqueness of mine comes from one source alone. It comes from the loving call to me by my name from the Author, the Creator and the End of my life. This is the road of your life and mine.
i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing.
Seasons of Your Heart
'Tis good to celebrate in the Silence those
Moments of gratitude for the friends who have
walked with me ...
There is always a return gift waiting in my heart.
It is for those who took off their shoes
to be reverent with my coming,
For those who stood on tiptoes beside me
when my hope was small.
It is for those who were present
when I needed my feet washed.
It is for those who raced with me to the tomb
on the day I was certain it held
nothing but death.
It is for those who celebrated my emptiness
with me and
For those who broke with me the kind of bread
that fed my death new life.
The meaning of the contemplative life -- of all spiritual life -- is love. Love is at once the origin, the means, and the goal of human spirituality, and when seen through spiritual eyes, the meaning of life in its entirety is love. God's love is endless, boundless without qualifications. Love must create, and we human beings and all the rest of creation are continually born in and from God's love. Creation brings forth diversity and separation. This permits a sense of "me and you," "I and thou," lover and beloved. In other words, we are created as unique individuals so that we may love God and one another. Love is the reason for our being. In our individuality and separateness, each of us is given a longing for re-union, a yearning for the greater fulfillment of love. In the endless movements of love, there is delicate beauty, majestic power, unbearable joy and considerable pain -- and freedom.
Morning Light
To write is to enter into silence, to speak in a low voice for the few who enter into silence with you because they recognize a voice that is rising up out of themselves. There exists a race of people, you see, who are in harmony with you. One is a writer, another is a reader, what does it matter? They are branches of the same stream, beyond ideas and opinions. If so many human beings live by appearances and exhaust themselves in the theater of the world, it is in order to cover over the depth of the abyss. For if the immemorial voice continued to murmur to them, they would no longer be able to believe in progress, money, success or glory.
Love
And, from Mother Teresa:
God is the friend of silence. We need to find God
But we cannot find God in noise, in excitement.
See how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass
Grow in deep silence ... the stars, the moon and the sun
Move in silence ...
The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer
Is faith. The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service ...
(The fruit of service is peace.)
The Book of Qualities
Courage has roots. She sleeps on a futon on the floor and lives close to the ground. Courage looks you straight in the eye. She is not impressed with powertrippers, and she knows first aid. Courage is not afraid to weep, and she is not afraid to pray, even when she is not sure who she is praying to. When Courage walks, it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude. The people who told me she is stern were not lying; they just forgot to mention that she is kind.
As a solitary bird
I am fond of solitude
Silently I direct my flight
toward a transcendent horizon
Freed and beauty bound
my heart sings a love song
In the still point of my peace-center
my life is a song of love
in unison with the divine love song
that calls forth the world
in sacred harmony.
In Search of the Beyond
What has always struck me about the way in which the desert dwellers receive friends is their ability to put all activity to one side. You, the guest, become the focal point, and they range themselves round you in a circle. If the owner of the tent has planned to go on a journey, he puts it off: now he must concern himself with you. If the wife was thinking of doing the laundry, she piles it all up on one side: now she must see about serving you. The guest is sacred: everything else is less important.
For the time being you are the one who matters: time is less important. And if the friend, who has left one corner of the world in order to search you out and spend a bit of time with you, has these rights, surely God has the same right, the one who came from heaven itself to find you; who took flesh in order to become visible for you; who became the Eucharist in order to gain entrance to your tent and stay there as long as possible.
East Coker
I said to my soul, be still
and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith,
But the faith and love and hope
are all in the waiting;
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought;
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.
Community & Grown
For, when all is said and done, each of us, and in the deepest part of our self, has to learn to accept our own essential solitude. In each of our hearts, there is a wound -- the wound of our own loneliness which hurts at moments of setback and can be even more painful at the time of death. And all suffering, sadness and depression is a foretaste of that death, a manifestation of our deep wound which is part of the human condition. Because our hearts thirst for the infinite, they will never be satisfied with the limitations which are always a sign of death, a manifestation of our deep wound which is part of the human condition. Because our hearts thirst for the infinite, they will never be satisfied with the limitations which are always a sign of death. We can touch that infinite in art, music, poetry and silence. We can experience moments of communion and love, of prayer and ecstasy -- yet, they are only moments.
We will only find peace when we discover that our setbacks, depression and even our sins can be an offering and a sacrifice, and so open the door to the eternal. We will only find trust when we have accepted our humanity, with all its limitations, contradictions and frantic search for happiness, and when we have discovered that the eternal wedding feast will be waiting for us, like a gift, after our death.
As we stop fleeing into work and activity, noise and illusion, and remain conscious of our wound, as we stop fleeing from our own solitude and accept our wound, we discover that this is the way we meet the One who responds to our cry, which comes from the shadow of our loneliness.
In the Name of Jesus
If there is any focus that the spiritual leader of the future will need, it is the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the One who keeps asking us, "Do you love me? Do you love me?" It is the discipline of contemplative prayer. Through contemplative prayer we can keep ourselves from becoming strangers to our own and God's heart. Contemplative prayer keeps us home, rooted and safe, even when we are on the road, moving from place to place, and often surrounded by sounds of violence and war. Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everything and everyone around us keep suggesting the opposite.
The Silent Life
CONTEMPLATIVES -- whether in monastic community or out in the marketplace -- not only help one another to grow grain and produce the bread of the body, but also bring one another to the spiritual ovens of solitude from which they are nourished with the hot, fresh Bread of the Spirit.
They not only press the grapes of their vineyards into material wine, but they lead one another to the eternal fountains of silence in which they drink the living waters and the rich wine of the Holy Spirit ... Thus, the Word of God comes silently into their midst, and eats and drinks with them.
A Tree Full of Angels
Giving yourself up to love is falling, with complete abandon, into the hands of the living God. This is the deep, interior prayer for which we have been striving. Here we must let go our dependency on thoughts, words, and images. We go into the beautiful darkness. We stop struggling. We let the angels carry us. We let go even of our yearning for God. Nothing is left except being in God. What could I say that would matter when I am in the heart of God? Contemplation! It is like going to heaven for a while.