Quotations

Mrcel Marceaux

Silence for me is music.

Don G. Campbell

My spiritual heritage included the weekly hymn by P. P. Bliss which continues to come to mind:

Sing them over again to me,
  Wonderful words of Life.
Let me more of their beauty see,
  Wonderful words of Life.
Words of Life and Beauty
  Teach me faith and duty:
Beautiful words, wonderful words,
  Wonderful words of Life.

The mystery of the voice and its potent transformative sounds may be experienced int he wonderful words of life, the tuning and vibration of the sacred breath, and the roaring silence of internal thought. 

Dorothy Walters Marrow of Flame

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.

Sobonfu E. Some Welcoming Spirit Home

A name ís an important word with meaning and energy that identifies someone or something. Our names bring certain patterns to our lives and have the capacity to forge our destinies. A name is also used as a way of entering into a person's world, wisdom, or life ... a code ingrained is us that allows us, when it is called, to remember, recognize and respond to our purpose.

Ellen Fremedon Windforest

There are many truths that do not have a name. Truths do not need names. But we do. We notice truths with names much more easily than truths we have not yet named, and naming is a way of realizing a truth that we had not noticed before

Suzanne Guthrie Grace's Window

A name is a holy place. The name is a womb that nourishes the one who bears it with all the love and hope mingled in the giving of the name. If not dictated by some angel, names are chosen carefully for for saints or statesmen, prophets or poets, family doctors or relatives or places with wonderful sounds. Names are chosen with love in gratitude or by faith in potential or for hope of intercession. Names carry meaning within them, every year of life drawing out the meaning of the life named.

Kabir Helminski

The human being is God's representative on this earth, one who knows the true names of things. This knowing of the names is the knowing of the distinguishing characteristics of things, their innate qualities.

Nikos Kazantzakis

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch the dread essence beyond logic.

Kathleen Norris

All things change when you measure them.
You might as well sing, the sound of your voice
joining the others, like water overflowing,
the name of the living God.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Please call me by my true names
so I can hear all my cries and
my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Meister Eckhart

What is my name? What is your name?
What is God's Name?
Our name is: that we must be born.
And the Creator's name is: to bear.
The soul alone among all creatures
is generative like God is.

Neil Douglas-Klotz Prayers of the Cosmos

Name of names, our small identity unravels in You. You give it back as a lesson.

Arthur Waskow Godwrestling: Round 2

"YHWH." It is the Name that by tradition we are forbidden to pronounce. Free yourself, I thought. Pronounce it. With no vowels, it came out: "Yyyyhhhhwwwwhhh." It sounded like breath. God's Name: the breath of life! No words, just the whispering, murmuring sound of a deep-drawn breath. For years I took delight in this discovery It hanged the way I prayed. Yet the hart of what had moved me I still had not discovered. I did not know it was my mother's breath I yearned for. For my mother to breathe easy once again, to draw once more a deep and even breath – that would be God for me. For each of us I realized, the deepest Name of God arises from the depths of our own life.

Kabir

I weave your name on the loom of my mind
To clean and soften ten thousand threads
And to comb the twists and knots of my thoughts.
No more shall I weave a garment of pain.
For you have come to me, drawn by my weaving,
Ceaselessly weaving your name on the loom of my mind.

Nomenology Project The Hidden Truth of Your Name

In ancient times the symbolic meaning of names was an assumed part of their overall significance: a name was far more than simply an identifier, it was a way of truly and essentially knowing the person or thing named. Choosing a name for a child was not taken lightly, as that name would necessarily prove to be a source of strength or weakness for that individual throughout his or her life... More recently, the belief in a deep existential connection among all things allows for the possibility that our name is fundamentally correct for us.

Phil Cousineau

To name something is to imbue it with soul.

Marcia Prager The Path of Blessing

The Name unites us all in a wondrous dance of being. One way of knowing God's Name is by linking our own life-breath with the life-breath of creation. Consider how it will affect even our casual conversation when we realize that each time we breathe, we call God's Name. Whenever we breathe we invoke the sacred. How this awareness will change the way we use our breath and our speech. The Name calling us most fully to embrace the divinity breathing throughout Creation, is the one Name we cannot appropriate, the one Name we cannot own.

Thomas Berry
What is our dream for the Earth? What is our dream for our children?

My hope is that all children will become earth literate. That they will experience no separation of spirit and matter! That they will come to know the Story of the Universe as theor story! That they will have a deep sense of being a unique expression of the universe and that they are the universe celebrating itself in their songs, dances, and rituals! Finally, I hope that they realize they have a purpose to fulfill and that they are a gift for the whole web of life!

Joan Price The earth is alive

Each of us has the responsibility to protect sacred land and life in every country of the world, in whatever way he or she can. We must remember that lightning and wind are not controlled by human boundaries. A sacred breath unifies the divine web of life. Any part that is broken affects us all. May you walk in balance.

Dalai Lama

In our world, we need a clear awareness of the inter-dependent nature of nations, of humans, animals, and the world. Everything is of interdependent nature. I feel that many problems, especially man-made problems, are due to lack of knowledge about this interdependent nature.

May Sarton

Help us to be always helpful gardeners of the spirit who know that without the darkness nothing comes to birth, as without light nothing flowers.

Helen Luke Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Colin Fletcher, in THE MAN WHO WALKED THROUGH TIME, describes how from moments of peak awareness, there came at last after long solitude and silence, and for the time being, a continuous sense of being one with the rhythm of all life and all time, of being inside as well as outside the life of everything he saw – animals, insects, the living rocks, the wind, the river; and finally, most difficult of all, he could feel even the craziness of modern humanity as part of the unbroken pattern of eternity.

Myczack Heron Dance

I just love silence. I love lying quietly in the afternoon with the sun streaming in through the windows of my cabin. Just being very quiet. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when I climb the hill up to the cabin, I stop and either throw myself down on the ground or look up to the stars and say, "This is fabulous. I am so happy, happy, happy that I am doing this. It's so nice to live close to the earth." I just love silence.

Teilhard de Chardin

When one views the planet Earth from outer space and sees no national boundaries, the prophecy of Teilhard de Chardin is compelling:

The age of nations is past. That task before us, if we would not perish, is to build the earth ... to help hear her wounds.

 

Zenkei Shibayana

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower,
the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower,
the truth of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

Anonymous

Diving Love and Light are the mirrors of silence in which all of creation is reflected. Be still and know.

Richard W. Bachtold Sacred Poems

Sacred hart in the blackening wilderness
stately deer, gracefully bounding,
holy vision of the Eternal Heart;
countless, unending blood memories,
surge like gold through your rhythmic veins,
ancient paths stir the soul's journey.
Sleeping titans stand on the edge,
disregarding the dark, grasping webs of life,
or silver antlers shining with white wisdom,
of pulsating pearls of poetry flowing
from open eyes of song,
as the saintly sculpture disappears
from its vanishing home into
a dying paradise.

Thomas Merton

Forests and fields, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same language: peace, solitude, silence.

Patricia Hart Clifford Sitting Still

A week of silence had tipped the balance from the desire for external rewards to the intrinsic value of being. I passed the oak I'd sat on the day before. This was happiness: witting in a tree. Lying in the grass. Feeling the fog or the sunshine touching my skin. Watching a hawk circle. All anbition and seeking had fallen away. Even my desire to cling to the sensations of the moment had dissolved. I only wanted to live my life while it was happening, not enmeshed in the past of all that lives.

William J. Fitzgerald One Hundred Cranes

The unique saga of the whooping crane's struggle to survive as a species reminds us of how wonderful and precious are all God's creatures. In its fragility and its numinosity the whooper provides a needed symbol for a spirituality of creation that rekindles human reverence for the mysterious presence of God dwelling deep down within the beauty and splendor of all that lives.

Anonymous

May the harmony of sky and water,
leaf and rock,
Nourish the creation and growth
of your inner being.

Sue Monk Kidd

Your heart is a seed.
Go. Plant it in the world.

Barbara M. Hubbard The Revelation

The separate parts of humanity are coming together to form a whole that is greater than and unpredictable from the sum of its parts. Synergy feels like love, loving one another as ourselves. We are, in fact, one body! Our capacities as a whole are infinitely greater than we we are separate tribes and nations. Once our consciousness shifts from feeling separated to knowing that we are all members of one body, our vast technological genius begins to serve the growth of ourselves as one planet. And that consciousness shift an happen in the twinkling of an eye. Once our consciousness shifts collectively, we can restore the Earth, we can feed all peoples, we can emancipate unique potential We can!

Johann Christoph Arnold I Tell You a Mystery

Despite repeated breaches of trust, Papa found the courage and humility to forgive those who betrayed or hurt him again and again: "I would rather trust and be betrayed, than to live in mistrust." He never tired of preaching forgiveness or pointing out that when people spend their lives harboring grudges, they become crippled by unwittingly binding themselves to the person they cannot forgive. They are imprisoned, yet they refuse to take the key of forgiveness out of their own pocket and unlock the door.

W. A. Meninger The Process of Forgiveness

The most authentic sign we can give ourselves that we have actually begun the process of forgiveness is our prayer. This is true even if the only prayer we can say is to ask to want to forgive. In the beginning ít may be too much for us even to pray for the person who hurt us. Perhaps all r¡re can do is to pray for ourselves — to pray that for our own sake we may begin the process of forgiveness. Prayer is a way of recognizing and acknowledging God's movement towards us and God's gift of grace

Desmond Tutu

Without forgiveness there is no future.

Anonymous

Forgiveness is the bridge to love.

Barbara Wood

FORGIVENESS is not simply the absolving of an enemy, or one who has done us wrong. Forgiveness must encompass all those things which disturb the tranquility of our soul: the barking dog that robs you of sleep, the heat of summer, the cold of winter; forgive the ingrown toenail, the flea that bites; forgive the cranky child, wrinkles, a forgotten birthday... And these are only a beginning. Such forgiveness must be practiced daily and with sincerity

Linda R. Douty

In the silence, ask to learn
how to give of yourself,
how to forgive others, and
how to live with gratitude.
Thus, we need not seek inner peace:
Peace will find us!

Blessed are you who forgive
without remembering
and
you who receive forgiveness
without forgetting.

Even as the silence exposes my subtle deceptions, my inauthenticity, my "sins" (much deeper than a mere catalog of misdeeds) -- it exposes at the same time God's unconditional love for me:

  • surprising in its lack of judgment,
  • astounding in its completeness,
  • and flavored with a sweet forgiveness.
Daniel Martin Ecology-Spirituality

Forgiveness is the treatment and the conditioning that helps loosen habits and patterns. When we fa1l foul of old ways, when we fail to get beyond our "stuff," despite all our good intentions, we have to forgive ourselves and try again. We have to act as compassionately toward ourselves as we would toward a child we were teaching a new skill. Forgiveness allows the process of transformation to continue by removing the obstacles that can check the flow.

Robert Muller

To forgive is the higest, most beautiful form of love.

Susan Howatch The Wonder Worker

I gave up trying to stop the tears. I abandoned my ruined defenses:

"I don't deserve any support from God after what I did." "Maybe not, but God's not interested in operating a brownie-point system – only in loving and forgiving those who are brave enough not to deny what they've done, no matter how terrible, brave enough to be truly sorry, brave enough to resolve to make a fresh start in serving Love as well as they possibly can."

I sat there with tears streaming down my face, and then just as I was thinking how utterly I was cut off from the Great Healer, that shining, mysterious figure I had tried so hard for so long to follow, Clare reached out across the table and briefly covered my clenched fists with her scarred hands.

Jean Vanier The Scandal of Service

To forgive means to give life, to remove what has been an obstacle to friendship and communion: those inner, psychological walls that had prevented dialogue or communicatíon. These walls are judgments that separate and isolate us from others and push people into anguish and inner death. To forgive means we no longer judge others. Forgiveness breaks down blockages to communication and communíon so that we can say to one another: I love you and want you to live.

Paul Ferrini The Bridge to Reality

Forgiveness is always necessary when I have the perception that I failed to love and accept myself or another. Forgiveness allows me to let go of any feelings of inadequacy that arise in me. Forgiving myself is the affirmation that I do not buy into the feelings of inadequacy that invariably arise when I judge myself or another. Forgiveness keeps the slate of my heart open for Spirit to write on.

Aileen Mercurio

I have stood alone on rocky shore,
asking for forgiveness in contrition,
And looked across the sea into the sunset
and known God's benediction.

Anonymous

Pain-bearer, Life-giver of us all,
in the silence, hear our prayer
for forgiveness and healing,
for peace and for love.
Amen.

Forgiveness brings a quiet mind
a peaceful heart...
love.

Ruth Ryden Living the Golden Path

Little slights, harsh or unthinking words that sting and hurt, something said or done that has left wounded feelings are not that hard to forgive. No one is perfect and all of us, at one time or another, have done these things without even realizing it. Develop an attitude of constant acceptance and forgiveness as you go about daily life, shrugging off these little things in the realization that only your own attitude is bringing the distress you are feeling about them. Forgive yourself first for getting upset: then forgive the other person – entirely. To really erase the memory, think of something nice about that person and send out vibrations of concern and affection instead. If the person really meant to hurt you, this is entirely disarming! Love conquers all.

Rumi The Illuminated Rumi

If the clearest connection to God is inside the heart, when you move more and more into that love center, the ache of being two, of feeling separation, dissolves... Whatever is deeply loved — friend, grandchild, late afternoon light, masonry, tennis, whatever absorbs you — this may be a reflection of how you move in the invisible world of spirit. It is your beauty, the elegant point where everything is one. The unio mystica is a lived thing ... a transformed intention, an intensity, and the peace of walking inside it: The Friend.

Lex Hixon Great Swan

O beloved friends, please listen: the purpose of human life, the supreme ideal of which all other ídeals are simply an expression, is to cultivate love... There is no boundary whatsoever to Pure love — it embraces humanity and Divinity equally. In this most intense love, no sense of duality can remain.

John O'Donohue

The heart ís the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to yourself.

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