How great is the difference between the hidden child and the secret friend! For the friend makes only loving, living but measured ascents toward God. But the child presses on to lose its own life upon the summits, in that simplicity which knoweth not itself.
Quotations
Perhaps there was in Beethoven the man, a child inside that never grew up and to the end of his life remained a creature of grace and innocence and trust even in his moments of greatest despair. And that innocent spirit speaks to us of hope and future and immortality.
The Sense of Wonder
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed or even lost before we reach adulthood. I wish I could give a sense of wonder to each child in the world, so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote to the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with artificial things, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Gifts of the Spirit
The child has an inner life, born in the sacred and pointing toward an unknown destiny. Our task is to nourish this inner life, to bring this precious crop to spiritual harvest.
Sophia House
"Sometimes, even in the middle of a busy street, I would feel the great union, the great peace when speaking and listening were attuned to the voice of the Most High."
"I have felt this rarely in my life, mostly when I was a very young child," returned Pawel. "Time slowed then, a sense of wonder expanded. Angels sent messages, poured out over the world. One had only to look up to see it, to hear it, to receive the messages. But childhood ends. ‘Reality’ conquers all."
"Childhood should not end," David said. "It should take a more mature form, but its innocence should not cease."
No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
Arise My Love
I know now that the spiritual Child is sleeping inside all of us. All beings, no matter how reactionary, fearful, dangerous or lost, can open themselves to the sacred within and become free even in prison. Prison is a perfect monastery.
Blackberry Season
What to do with children?
It came so naturally.
I remembered Aunt Marion’s example.
Give them a place to run —
to breathe fresh air first —
and lead them to a place to swim.
Feed them fruit.
Show them how it is peeled and sweetened.
Love all children
as if they were your own.
Then, just before they go to sleep,
Give them music by the silvery moon.
Inner peace is a great gift. When we are at peace, we find the freedom to be ourselves, even in difficult times. We let go of what is unnecessary and embrace what really matters.
The Direct Path
Slowly, the practice of gratitude will begin to transform your consciousness so you start to detect Divine Presence and Divine Mercy all around you, which in time tremendously lessens your fear and suffering. For, it will make you aware of the maternal protection of God and of how the entire universe and all of life is constantly giving you signs of God's glory, beauty, and love. Practicing gratitude not only heals you of vanity and pride; it also heals your fear, grief, and insecurity of separation.
Gratitude is an amazing grace crowned in heaven with peace.
In Silence as
Bright as Round White Light
of full moon,
Thank you.
In Blessed Stillness
of new moon season
Thank you.
Life and Breath
All rest
in One.
The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei
As the monk advances in practice, feelings of hardship decrease and he is suffused with energy and sustained by joy. The marathon monk has become one with the mountain, flying along a path that is free of obstruction. The joy of practice has been discovered and all things are made new each day. Awakened to the Supreme, one marathon monk described his gratitude thus:
"Gratitude for the teachings of the enlightened ones,
gratitude for the wonders of nature,
gratitude for the charity of human beings,
gratitude for the opportunity to practice ... "
Friend of the Heart
The right here is an inner, not an outer, state of being rooted in Love ... Not only am I alert to the present moment, I am hopefully, wishfully, longingly expecting something in it. Gratitude deepens both the attentiveness and the expectancy. Through gratitude I am not only glad for where I am and for all the possibilities inherent in where I am, I am also able to accept the everything or the nothing that is given. Gratitude enables me to find my very own place, humbly and joyfully, in the right here.
Love Is Stronger Than Death
In the very last conversation we ever had, five days before his death, the subject came around to gratitude ...
"If you're quiet enough, as still as that mountain, you can hear in your heart a silent ‘thank you.' The whole universe, if you listen in your heart -- every blade of grass, each bird, each stone -- it is all ‘thank you.' We are born into ‘thank you' ... every step of the way is ‘thank you.' "
Rafe may not have heard the stars move. But I believe he was hearing "the Love that moves the stars and the sun."
The essence of all beautiful
art, all great art,
is gratitude.
The ancients sometimes said
that the worst sin is
ingratitude, which is a
forgetting of the greatness,
beauty, truth, and goodness
of the Source that is
constantly creating us--
in other terms, a forsaking
of Being and of the Good.
Were there no God, we would
be in this glorious world
with grateful hearts
and no one to thank!
The Fragrance of Faith
Grandfather cultivated gratitude at every step. On Fridays, after noon prayers, he retired to his room for a half hour ritual. Eyes closed, hands on heart, grandfather melted into a trance. Softly, at times in silence, he intoned continuous words of heart-felt thanks to God interspersed with recitations from the Holy Book. At times his body swayed with his outpourings; other times he was still. Tears poured profusely down his cheeks, soaking his shirt. Curious family members who secretly peeked in invariably burst into tears.
Thou that has given so much to me,
Give me one thing more--
a grateful heart.
Tariki: Embracing Despair, Discovering Peace
When you no longer have expectations, the unexpected kindness of others and small acts of consideration become like "sweet manna from heaven." The feeling that rises spontaneously within one's heart at such times is true gratitude. When one is accustomed to kindness, one can lose the feeling of gratitude. One must constantly return oneself to the spiritual starting point of no expectations.
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
Gratitude gentles us
and grants us grace.
As I express my gratitude,
I become more deeply aware of it.
And the greater my awareness,
the greater my need to express it.
What happens here is a spiraling ascent,
a process of growth in
ever expanding circles
around a steady center.
God is Silence. There is a silence of the tongue, a silence of the whole body. There is a silence of the soul and the spirit. The silence of the spirit is when all its movements are stirred solely by Being; in this state it is truly silent, aware that the silence which is upon it is itself silent.
Silence before the Beloved has deep significance in the quietness of the soul as the individual sinks into the central fire of communion. In the circle of community the most personal elemental chords of life receive their deepest stimulation. In the silent act of breathing and in the unspoken dialogue of the soul with Love, solitary as these are, deep communion can be given.
Know who you are.
Do not debase the name.
Carry it in your heart,
a root flame of love.
Walk through the world in silence.
The moment will come.
The sign will be a soft
stirring of wings,
a gold shimmer of air.
The Sound of Listening
The sun tries to come out. It is a true November morning--cold and grey, with hints of blue and white light in the sky, a haze over the hills and trees, the ground covered with wet leaves, the trees dead and barren except for the pines. ... I sit content, held in peace as if God is embracing me. The silence is magnificent and healing. I become a part of it--silent, calm, at peace. My soul is quieted.
Real silence is both supremely simple and yet not easy. It draws us into a dimension always open to those who will allow themselves to be centered. ... We enter into silence to let the holiness of mystery take possession of us.
The Discipline of Silence
The discipline of silence doesn't mean just taking a short vacation from the spoken word. It also means giving complete relaxation to the muscles, the tissues, the tongue itself. A modern writer once said: "Knowledge has never been known to enter the head via an open mouth." It is when you become completely silent that you are able to absorb knowledge. God speaks in silence. The discipline of silence is essential on the path.
Meister Eckhart tells us that in silence we make room in our soul for God and that God delights to be in our soul when we have made room. Should we not then be building mansions of silence in our souls to welcome Love's Holy Presence.
We can make our minds
so like still water
that beings gather about us
that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet,
our silence.
Mother Silence
Why do I forget You, abandon You?
You who are wholeness,
You who are home, always now, always present,
giving what every cell in me yearns for--
to collapse into Your warm breath of Life;
defenses drop, naked I be,
cherished solely for my nakedness,
my void, my forgetfulness.
Silence pregnant with all sounds,
I come back, prodigal that I am--
bruised, tired, wired,
To be undone again by Your embrace.
Silence is our spontaneous response
to the experience of numinous presence,
to Love-in-our-midst.
The Way of the Dreamcatcher
Perhaps nothing would be said at first, but eventually a sound, a poem, an artwork or an impression would spark an exchange, and there would be a clear flow of meditative, constructive thought. Periodic silences would follow, to which we both listened almost as if the quiet were a third party speaking to us. And in response to that stillness we would breathe deeply, come to a sort of relaxed attention, and in a humble, reverent manner lower our eyes, as though acknowledging the mystical presence of something greater.
Find the Deep River Within
When I drop down into myself in the quiet hours of the night, it feels as though I have tapped into a deep river that runs strongly beneath the busyness of my daily life. When I allow myself to fully experience this deep river without, I connect not only with myself and what matters most to me but also with a powerful stream of silence, mystery, clarity, aliveness. I seem to tap into a universal source available to us all of deeply nourishing spiritual qualities that can provide a healing balm for our out-of-balance lives.
Silence alone reveals the deepest depths of Life.
To see there must be silence.
A New Set of Eyes
The silence of the storm dominated everything. There are no words to describe a quiet so potent. I knew the snow was echoing a stillness that exists, hidden, in everything. I saw that this stillness generates all life. And sitting there in the snow, I wept at the profound sound and power of that silence.
I began to see the falling flakes as yellow bursts of energy, as light and as I looked at the light I saw that its total composition was Love. That night I suspended many cherished beliefs. The snow was alive.
The Scalpel and the Soul
For me, as a physician, there is no surer evidence that something glorious and wonderful lies beyond our mortal existence. Death is not an end. It is a new beginning. It entails a magnificent reunion with God and all the wonderful souls that we've ever loved or will love. This is our destination when we pass over. Dying is not the end but rather a shift to a fresh form of life, a new and glorious manifestation of ourselves. In this regard, death would seem to be just another dramatic transition in a continuing cycle, similar tin quality to birth. We jettison our mortal shell as we pass from one life form and consciousness to another, more wondrous than the latter.
When it is over,
I want to say:
all my life I was a bride
married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking
the world in my arms.
Go into your grief, for there,
your soul will grow.
Beyond Fear
Death is transformation and it occurs constantly. Every moment that has passed is death. Each moment gives us the opportunity to live in the present. The past does not exist. The future has yet to come. I am dying all the time. I am adapting to every change in life. I die every day because I am not attached to what happened a moment ago, I let it go, and this makes me free. When we surrender to death, we live only in the moment.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
I began to face death and its implications very young. I could never have imagined then how many kinds of death there were to follow, one heaped upon another. The death that was the tragic loss of my country, Tibet, after the Chinese occupation. The death that is exile. The death of losing everything my family and I possessed ... for we had been among the wealthiest and most famous in Tibet.
The Other Wind
I think that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed
To die gracefully is to live fully.
All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are
and who you are is where you will be
when death takes you across the river.
My religions is to live and die
without regret.
Forest of Peace prayer card
With their last breath
those we love do not say good-bye --
for love is timeless.
Instead, they leave us a solemn promise
that when they are finally at rest
they will continue to be present to us
whenever they are called upon.
Let us fear not, nor grieve beyond letting go
the departure of those we have greatly loved,
for in the Tree of Life their roots and our own
are forever intertwined.
Jayber Crow
Her eyes filled with tears, but she said quietly, "I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard."
Then, in the loss of all the world, when I might have said the words I had so long wanted to say, I could not say them. I saw that I was not going to be able to say them. I saw that I was not going to talk without crying, and so I cried.
She looked at me and held out her hand. She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light.