Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and
laughter at once,
so I see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Your heart is a seed. Go, plant it in the world!
In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion. Not me against you, not me straightening out the present ill, fighting to gain a just result for myself and others, but compassion, a life that goes against nothing and fulfills everything.
To love another is to see the face of the Beloved mirroring your own.
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple: The philosophy is kindness.
Compassion is not a social facade. Compassion is not a sham designed to mask our essential self–centeredness. Compassion is the emotion that links us to those outside ourselves. It is the capacity for outreach. It enables us, it drives us, to go beyond ourselves to the beating pulse of the rest of the world. Compassion, then, is a dimension of what it means to be fully human.
Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for a second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
They are not long,
These days to be,
But a taste of eternity.
Yet in each day,
In each hour,
There is the power
Of a Now
That stretches timeless
In its core
And knows eternity
Be not more.
I abandon all that I think I am, all that I hope to be, all that I believe I possess. I let go of the past, I withdraw my grasping hand from the future, and in the great silence of this moment, I alertly rest my soul.
For a child, time as the great circus parade of past, present, and future, cause and effect, has scarcely started yet and means little because for a child all time is by and large NOW time and apparently endless. What child, while summer is happening, bothers to think much that summer will end? What child, when snow is on the ground, stops to remember that not long ago the ground was snowless? It is by content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity — happy and sad times.
I live in unfamiliar places:
The unknowing of empty spaces
Between what was and what is yet to be.
It is the hardest earthly place for me
To dwell within, pause, absolutely still.
Knowing only God and love can fill
The wanting, one drop at a time.
It's only through the heart's abiding
That Wisdom might be found hiding
In the shadows of such Sacred Pause.
I offer up what was to mourn in empty spaces,
Let go of worn embraces
So what is yet to be
May somehow birth in me.
In this well ordered universe, the perfect vehicle for our spiritual growth and unfoldment is exactly our present situation.
As spring and summer follow
autumn and winter,
so our lives have their seasons.
Help us to live in the eternal moment,
awaiting your perfect timing
in all things.
Life may be brimming over with experiences, but somewhere, deep inside, all of us carry a vast and fruitful loneliness wherever we go. And sometimes the most important thing in the whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inward in prayer for five short minutes.
In our most ordinary days we have moments of happiness, moments of comfort and enjoyment, moments of seeing something that pleased us, something that touched us, moments of contacting the tenderness of our hearts... It's essential during the day ... to begin to cherish those moments as precious. Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness.
Read not the Times,
read the Eternities.
There has never been a time
when you and I have not existed...
There will never be a time
when we will cease to be.
when each day
is sacred
when each hour
is sacred
when each instant
is sacred
earth and you
space and you
bearing the sacred
through time
you'll reach
the fields of light.
Follow anything in its act of being — a snowflake falling, ice melting, a loved one waking — and we are ushered into the ongoing moment of the beginning, the quiet instant from which each breath starts. What makes this moment so crucial is that it continually releases the freshness of living. The key to finding this moment and all its freshness, again and again, is slowing down. When we find ourselves stalled in our very serious and ambitious plans, we are often being asked to re-find the beginning of time.
Time is not at all what it seems. It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past.
What a treasure this life is!
Every second belongs to eternity.
Make me, O Lord, at last, a simple thing
Time cannot overwhelm.
Once I transcended time
A bud broke to a rose.
And I rose from a last diminishing.
Around our pillows golden ladders rise,
And up and down the skies,
With winged sandals shod,
The angels come, and go, the Messengers of God!
I believe we are free, within limits, and yet there is an unseen hand, a guiding angel, that somehow, like a submerged propeller, drives us on.
We attract angels by becoming the qualities that are of interest to them. When we focus on such qualities as compassion, faith or tolerance . . . we attract angelic beings that are trying to help develop that in all humanity.
I believe that angels are forms, images, and expressions through which the essences and energy forces of God can be transmitted and that, since there are an infinite number of these forms, the greatest service anyone can pay the angelic host is never consciously to limit the ways angels might appear to us.
Her eyes were kindled from the lamps of Heaven.
Her voice reached through me, tender, sweet and low:
An angel's voice, a music of its own.
And in the center, great wings spread apart,
more than a thousand festive angels shone,
each one distinct in radiance, and in art.
The earth has grown old
with its burden of care
but in truth it always is young
The heart of the jewel
burns lustrous and fair,
and its soul full of music breaks the air
When the song of angels is sung.
The sun receives information from the center of the galaxy. Light comes from other stars as well as the sun. The universe communicates with itself through light. Light beams are messengers, and one synonym for messenger is "angel." A light ray is an angel. An angel is a being of light carrying information outward from the center of our galaxy, star to star, sun to planet. Our seemingly solid bodies are created from condensed sunlight, making us vessels of light, just like angels. Our true identity is angelic, or light-filled. We are beings filled with the information that comes to earth in light.
If we would cooperate with the angels in their work, we must put aside all selfish and self-centered thought and throw ourselves heart and soul into the service of others.
Angels are evidence that God is taking notice of us. They ask the same always: surrender, obedience, submission, and humility before the Holy One. Some say they make us homesick for heaven.
Angels rejoice as we befriend their companioning presence.
There must be always remaining in everyone's life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful, and by an inherent prerogative, throws all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning—then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory; old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.
I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of bed in the middle of the night because it is imperative that I hear the silence of the night, aloud, and with my face on the floor, say psalms, alone, in the silence of the night... The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in the silence...
Silence is that place just before the voice of God. It is the void in which God and I meet in the center of my soul.
I have faith ... that one unknown voice of sacred Silence will prayerfully proclaim the advent of an everlasting light during the darkest night ...
How quiet –
This night-shattering
Dawn.
True experience always comes about in withdrawal "from the crowd." The original, true and proper attitude of the mind is, as Heraclites says, that of "listening to the truth of things..." Our journey into the territory of being should be made in silence, with wondering, wide-open eyes. The fullness of truth and reality is revealed only to those who attain to a silence which covers every aspect of their beings, or who, in other words make their basic attitude toward the whole of being one of delicate and reserved courtesy... For anyone who wishes to hear what is true and real, every voice must for once be still. Silence, however, is not merely the absence of speech. It is not something negative; it is "something" in itself. It is a depth, a fullness, a peaceful flow of hidden life. Everything true and great grows in silence. Without silence we fall short of reality and cannot plumb the depths of being. Kierkegaard, who was acutely aware of this, once made the profoundly true statement: "Silences are the only scrap of Christianity we still have left."
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.
I will come to you in the silence,
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear my voice,
I claim you as my choice,
be still and know I am here.
I am hope for all who are hopeless,
I am eyes for all who long to see.
In the shadows of the night
I will be your light,
come and rest in me.
Those who neglect silence bring only a distracted heart and a preoccupied mind to their prayer and, instead of deriving new strength from it, they only offer God a heart full of trifles. Intimate conversation with God is easily stifled if you do not first put an end to exterior chatter; yet, if you love silence and keep it well, your heart will be a temple where God will dwell and become known to you there.
As I pray for life's lessons, Silence incurs and things become clear. This silence leaves no doubt. Assumptions are not needed. Paths are paved with care and concern. Spirits speak in this silence of righteousness. They know my worries and they direct me to destinations of understanding, compassion, and faith. Then, as if from a deep sleep, I wake with the feeling of serenity. A feeling of hope overwhelms me, and I know I've been touched by hands of unconditional love. Confidence exudes from me as I approach my day. Many ask, "How do you find humility...?" I easily respond, "In Silence."