When I had my breakfast I would leave the door open in the summer and the birds would come right inside and pick up the crumbs around my feet. They had no fear of me at all. These birds also brought their families when ready. I later found out that this bird trust was because of my silence. Once I spoke to them, all went like the wind, and I praised God for such trust. Providing I remained silent they had no fear of me and I learned a great deal about their ways.

Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all its creatures the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony. In O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather reminds us of our need to believe in the good soil of our lives, to do what we can to wake it up and then to wait.

"The land had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still."

We can learn the same lesson from sitting still with the land of the heart. It, too, has its little jokes. We think it is poor soil because we don't know how to work it. When we learn to do our inner work, it will wake up and work itself. All we need is a PATIENT WAITING and a TENDER ABIDING.

Gardening can provide an opportunity to slow down, be still, breathe, and connect with another form of life. For me, it is an experience of communion; I become one with this precious life in my garden, and it heightens my experience of love in the world. And that is what spirituality is all about: growing in love.

Responsible people are beginning to realize that the earth is an awesome mystery, ultimately as fragile as we are ourselves. ...That being so, there is need to be sensitive to the earth, for the earth identifies with our own suffering, exploitation of the earth is exploitation of the human, elimination of the aesthetic splendors of the earth is the diminishment of all existence.

Ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds of the air and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know the hand of God?

I found myself in a miniature inlet. An intense tranquility covered the scene. And yet -- within the tranquility, the lake and hills were burning with spiritual energy. The silence was almost palpable; still, the silence had a sound of its own, like a subterranean waterfall. I felt as if I had stepped back a million years in time; but the energy I felt was electric and immediate. ... The very wildness of the wilderness generates a spiritual field that connects us with the source from which all life evolved. To go into the wilderness, we must undertake a journey that purifies our senses and prepares us for the subtle lessons that the wilderness has to teach us.

To meditate is to become silent. In that inner quietness, you lose yourself in God's creation. You recognize the Creator in all of creation. ...To meditate is to keep on listening, listening, listening to God. To listen is to become lost in God, sensing God everywhere. To be silent is a form of being in love with God, and so is weeping in total surrender into immense love and longing for God.

When you are about to talk, wait a second and consult the indwelling Divine Guest and ...be like someone receiving a visit or listening; without knowing it, grace will be your guide. When you are questioned, swallow your reply and wait a second to hear what you should say; it is particularly when you talk that you must know how to listen. If you are going to see someone, pause for a moment so that you can take Another with you.

When we don't listen, we are shutting ourselves off -- not from others but from ourselves. We can't do anything from a place of knowing. When we think we know something, we don't listen. We have to empty ourselves over and over, return to unknowing, and just listen. And listen. And listen... And once we listen, we have to act. The functioning that comes out of listening -- out of "Attention!" -- is compassionate action. If we don't listen, we can't act with compassion.

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

For the abbas (fathers) and ammas (mothers) of the desert, solitude with its silence was a creative medium, a forge of transformation through which the false self in its adaptation to the pride, luxury, lust for power, and greed of the "world" was melted away in the fires of spiritual discernment. One emerged from the silence as a transformed self ... a person of humility, compassion, and responsiveness to the Word of God.

Silence was much more than not speaking, it was mostly a quality of heart. It was the creation of an inner space where genuine listening takes place. The ammas and abbas knew that in silence the Word most readily takes root.

It has been a long year. Can I REALLY be well again? "Thank You for another day," I whisper each morning. The sheets on my bed feel good. The light coming through the window is a gift. How do I want to live out this day? I look at the African violet on my windowsill. If I don't water it, it will die. I see that my spirit is no different. I am beginning to listen a lot. The silence is my water.

Calm and serene, let us listen to the Inner Voice. How could I have lived all that time without realizing that everything in the world has a voice and speaks? Not just the things that are supposed to speak, but the others, like the gate, the walls of the houses, the shade of trees, the sand, and the silence. Even before my accident [where I went blind], I loved sound, but now it seems clear that I didn't listen to it.

It was as though the sounds of earlier days were too far away from me, and heard through a fog. At all events my accident had thrown my head against the humming heart of things, and the heart never stopped beating.

When we adhere to the belief system of love, and have thoughts only of God, we begin to understand why our true identities are ultimately found in our love rather than in our bodies. We are each the essence of love. Peace and happiness are at the center of the heart of love. There is a complete absence of fear and guilt, and there is diminishing pain and misery; there are only loving and forgiving thoughts. Within this belief system, love and life are eternal.

Unless we are grounded in Mystery -- unless we experience both ourselves and others as co-participants in Mystery -- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time. Unless we have "new eyes" that can see others contemplatively, it is easy to miss the many-spendored thing that is our life together.

All that we love mirrors who we are. To be so imbued with love that we reflect it back with our whole being is a fundamental human longing ~ not only to love another man or woman, but actually to become love. When you become love you love everything around you. You greet every human being with love and draw love out of them. ~ You feel you are loved by God, so that God's love streams through you. Everything you do is marked by this love. You do your work for love ~ You do not have to create love in yourself. You have only to drink at the spring of divine love, which is bubbling up in you and is always enough.

Love is the energy at the center of all life, the reality beneath our fears, the breath within the breath, the seed of all that grows. Loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all is interconnected and sacred. For most people, the journey toward love requires that we penetrate the armor around our hearts, feel our grief, and open ourselves to all our feelings. In doing so we become less and less dependent on others to validate our worth.

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of humankind.

The experience of the enormity we falteringly label "divine" is unconditional love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion ~ the sense of presence, of simply being, when investigated brings one toward the experience of the Beloved. At times the heart bursts into flame, the mind kind and clear. But usually it is just a simple spaciousness and ease that lets thoughts float in mercy and awareness and recognizes the evolutionary struggle in everyone they meet.

"Love isn't something you want to DO with someone."

"I'm not at all sure I know what love is," I said meaning it.

"I think love is when you know that a part of you IS the person you love, and a part of him or her is inside of YOU. You can't use or manipulate or deceive someone you truly love, because you'd be using or manipulating or lying to yourself. Does that make sense?"

May the love you are shine brightly;
May love bless you and all you meet!

Prayer is opening into Love; into that radiant and centerless Love surpassing our understanding and enfolding all of life.

You are silence. Silence unites us, while words divide us. Silence gathers us together, while words scatter us. Silence invites us to peace, while words stir us to wars. You are silence, simple silence, eloquent silence, active silence, contemplative silence. ... Help me to be eloquently silent -- exactly as You are.

Don't think that those who enter the silence of God are "silent". Nothing could be farther from the truth! Silence is a thunder! You will be able to hear it everywhere. Your nights and days will be filled with it. ...Many confuse silence with solitude. Solitude is being alone with God, waiting for God. But silence is an immense sea into which you enter and never leave. And once you have plunged into this silence, you will always be silent.