God takes such delight in the human person that Divinity sings this song to our soul:
O lovely rose on the thorn!
O hovering bee on the honey!
O pure dove in your being!
O glorious sun in your setting!
O full moon in your course!
From you, I your God will never turn away.
Can you hear the music?
Can you hear the sound
Of the life that floats by on the wind
Or comes up through the ground?
Its strange enchanting rhythm
Will bring your soul release.
You will hear it and then suddenly
All you've ever known is peace.
Oh, listen to the symphony;
Every note is a new world.
Listen to the music of your destiny
As it unfolds.
Among all the different arts, the art of music has been especially considered divine, because it is the exact miniature of the law working through the whole universe.
It is not difficult to understand why music often touches us so deeply. Music is the key to the power within -- a bridge of sorts -- and there is an infinite variety of music suitable to individual tastes and preferences to lead in this inward search. Composers are often aware of the power of the music that comes from within them and have from time to time spoken of it ... Brahms, being deeply aware of the source of his creative gift, stated that his creative power was released in the moment of his realization of his oneness with the Creator.
I sing of hemlocks whispering mysteries,
Of meadows green with promise,
Of lakes with secrets,
Of mountain peaks in touch with eternity,
Of solitude filled with murmurings we can never quite hear,
Of presences that hover just beyond the edge of perception,
Of meanings etched in snow, transcribed with wings;
I sing the truth
Of hidden things.
The former musician, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave up the practise of music "to tune souls instead of instruments, to harmonize people instead of notes ... Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of our Beloved ... It is because music is the picture of our Beloved that we love music."
Your Light alone -- like mists o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
Carl Hammerschlag relates a healing interaction he had with a very ill old Pueblo priest and clan chief, whom he was treating in the hospital:
Suddenly, there was this beautiful smile, and he asked me, "Where did you learn to heal?"
Although I assumed my academic credentials would mean little to the old man, I responded almost by rote, rattling off my medical education, internship and certification.
Again the beatific smile and another question: "Do you know how to dance?"
... I answered that, sure, I liked to dance; and I shuffled a little at his bedside. Santiago chuckled, got out of bed, and short of breath, began to show me his dance.
"You must be able to dance if you are to heal people," he said.
"And will you teach me your steps?" I asked, indulging the aging priest.
Santiago nodded. "Yes, I can teach you my steps, but you will have to hear your own music.”
May I become hollow like the reed, so You may play your melody through me.
For I long to be attuned to the great Song of the Cosmos,
to know the song of inner praise!
O, that I might hear the divine melody within my soul
and give birth to a dancing star!
... we overlook so many joys, so many hidden treasures, when we hurry from place to place, person to person, experience to experience, with little attention anywhere. All that matters passes before us now, at this moment. It has been said the greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention; additionally, living life fully attentive to the breezes, the colors, the sorrows and joys as well, is the most prayerful response any of us can make in this life.
Sometimes little forgotten souls may need to pour out their hearts from sheer empty loneliness. Blessed is the one who is called to listen to their tales with an understanding heart, for love and light. Often just the call to sit quietly and listen may be the power of bestowing the most divine benediction of all. The gift of listening with an understanding heart is a divine gift to be developed by all. For, it is the listening heart that is prepared for the full outpouring of the gift of light. It is the listening heart alone that can hear the voice of God.
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently -- and even if you do nothing during the whole of your prayer but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your time would be very well employed.
“Would you teach me silence?" I asked.
"Ah!" He seemed to be pleased. "Is it the Great Silence you want?"
"Yes, the Great Silence."
"Well, where do you think it's to be found?" he asked.
"Deep within me, I suppose. If only I could go deep within, I'm sure I'd escape the noise at last. But it's hard. Will you help me?" I knew he would. I could feel his concern, and his spirit was so silent.
"Well, I've been there," he answered. "I spent years going in. I did taste the silence there. But one day, Jesus came -- maybe it was my imagination -- and said to me simply, 'Come, follow me.' I went out, and I've never gone back."
I was stunned. "But the silence ..."
"I've found the Great Silence, and I've come to see that the noise was all inside.
Listen, if you can stand to.
Union with the Friend means not being who you've been,
Being instead silence: A place: A view
Where language is inside seeing.
Who are You, sweet Light, who inundate me and enlighten me and enlighten the night of my heart? You guide me just like a mother's hand; but if You leave me, I cannot advance a single step. You are space that surrounds my being and in which it is concealed. If you abandon me, I fall into the abyss of nothingness, from where You called me into being. You are nearer to me than myself, more intimate than my inmost being. And yet, no one touches You or understands You and You break the bonds of every name: Holy Spirit - Eternal Love!
Prayer is based on attention to the presence of the sacred in life, and to the thoughts that express our longing for relationship with that presence. And the disciplines of inner guidance are based on attention to the wisdom of the "Still, small voice within." Attention may seem at first like a very ordinary thing. But it is the cornerstone of the spiritual life. In fact, we could say that paying attention is the essence of true spirituality. When we pay attention, whatever we are doing is transformed and becomes a part of our spiritual path.
I have reached the inner vision
And through your Spirit in me
I have heard your wondrous secret.
Through your mystic insight
You have caused a spring of knowledge
To well up within me,
A fountain of power
Pouring forth living waters,
A flood of love
And of all-embracing wisdom
Like the splendor of eternal Light.
There is a channel between voice and presence,
A way where information flows.
In disciplined silence, the channel opens;
With wandering talk, it closes.
One of the greatest gifts we can give one another is rapt attention to one another's existence.
In the silence of the cloister garden a human being is more than human, taking on the subtle wings of light. Nature is more than nature, flowing with the essence of life. People and plants take on the quality of illumination, as they really are. Inside the sweet harmony of the cloister garden live all beings, those who have lived before and all beings unborn. Inside the holy stillness is the collective being: the wisdom, joy and love freed and saved from the hearts of all. And all this is just a small part of the immense being of God in the cloister garden. Every prayer, every meditation that participates in the cloister garden participates in all such gardens through history and the desire for a life that is wholly sacred and blessed. Each morning in the cloister garden is a new day begun in the bright light of the silence. And each evening among the still flowers is to end another day in the arms of silence.
Teilhard de Chardin practiced the art of self-forgetfulness; the self being forgotten in a sympathetic union with all people and with every man and woman individually. The deep roots of his simultaneous love of God and the world is seen most clearly in THE DIVINE MILIEU:
Throughout my whole life, during every moment I have lived, the world has gradually been taking on light and fire for me, until it has come to envelop me in one mass of luminosity, glowing from within ... The purple flush of matter fading imperceptibly into the gold of spirit, to be lost finally in the incandescence of a personal universe ... This is what I have learned from my contact with the earth -- the diaphany of the divine at the heart of a glowing universe, the divine radiating from the depths of matter aflame ... To overcome every obstacle, to unite our beings without loss of individual personality, there is a single force which nothing can replace and nothing destroy, a force which urges us forwards and draws us upwards: this is the force of love.
I walk in stillness. Where my rest is set
Is Heaven. And the silence of the stars
Sings in a soundless circle. For the song
Of Heaven is past hearing, and ascends
Beyond the tiny range the ear can catch.
And soars into a spaceless magnitude
Where sound and silence meet in unity,
Holy am I, who bring your Name
With me and who abide in You, although
I seem to walk alone. Look carefully,
And you may glimpse the One who stands
Beside me. And I lean on You in sure
Unswerving confidence. It was not thus
Before, for I was bitterly afraid
To take the Help of Heaven for my own.
Yet Heaven never failed, and only I
Stayed comfortless, while all of Heaven's gifts
Poured out before me. Now the arms of love
Are all I have all my treasure is.
Now I have ceased to question. Now I come
From chaos to the stillness of my home.
Sweet song of silence, forever singing in my heart!
Words cannot express, the tongue cannot tell;
Only the heart knows the songs which were never sung,
The music which was never written.
I have heard that great harmony and feast that great presence,
I have listened to the Silence; and in the deep
Places of life, I have stood naked and
Receptive to Your songs and they have entered my soul.
I am lost in the mighty depths of Your inner calm and peace.
Dear Companion of my day, You are the Holy Mystery I surrender to when I close my eyes. I give You myself, my flaws, the mistakes, the petty self-congratulations. I give You my dear ones: my fondest hopes for them, my worries, and my dark thoughts regarding them. Take my well-constructed separation from me. Hold me in Your truth.
This day is already past. I surrender it. When I think about tomorrow, I surrender it too. Keep me this night. With You and in You I can trust not knowing anything. I can trust incompleteness as a way. Dark with the darkness, silent with the silence, help me dare to be that empty one -- futureless, desireless -- who breathes Your name even in sleep.
The Beloved's home is our hearts, as we discover in the Silence.
Bless the Beloved, O you angels,
You faith-filled ones who hear the Word, following the Voice of Love!
Bless the Beloved, all you people,
Those who abandon themselves into Love's hands!
Bless the Beloved, bless all of Creation!
Bless the Beloved, O my soul!
I plant the Tree of the Great peace. I name the tree the Tree of the Great Long Leaves. If anyone of any nation shall show a desire to obey the laws of the Great Peace, they shall trace the roots to their source, and they shall be welcomed to take shelter beneath the Tree of the Long Leaves. When more people come, the branches of the tree simply grow longer. An eagle lives at the top of the tree and warns the people whenever the peace is threatened.
We need quiet time in the presence of God. Although we want to make all our time time for God, we will never succeed if we do not reserve a specific and consistent amount of time to listen in the Silence. This asks for much discipline and risk-taking, because we often have something more urgent to do and "just sitting there" and "doing nothing" may disturb us more than it helps. But there is no way around this. Being useless and silent in the presence of God belongs to the core of all prayer. In the beginning, we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God's voice. This is at times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start to miss these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it, an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us.
Contemplation is the central human act that puts us perceptively and lovingly in touch with the innermost reality of everything because it is a simple intuition of the truth.
The silence of contemplation! Within each of us lie unknown gulfs of doubt, violence, secret distress ... as well as guilt, of things unacknowledged, so that gaping below our feet we sense an immense void. As we let divine love pray in us, trusting as a child, one day these gulfs will be inhabited. And, one day we shall discover that there has been a revolution in ourselves. With time, contemplation begets a happiness. And, that happiness is the drive behind our struggle for and with all people. It is courage, energy to take risks. It is overflowing gladness.
I cried to God,
I beat upon the door
Until my knuckles bled;
God gave me no answer, gave no sign.
"There is no God," I sad.
I stopped my clamor
And lay spent,
A channel at ebb tide,
And slowly in the silence
The door swung wide.
The truth of the hermitage comes down to paradoxes. It empties us so we may be filled; its simplicity is a luxury, and we go there seeking solitude so we can better serve God's people ... Whether we serve as parents, as pastors, as missionaries, as teachers, as peace-makers -- there is a monk in all of us. To get in touch with the silence of God is necessary for everyone. The hermitage allows people to get in touch with that silence. That does not mean the touch only happens here. But it can be refreshed here. It can be strengthened.
The life of prayer is a journey with God as well as toward God, a journey in which prayer becomes for those who pursue it as natural as breathing. The first big step is to cease talking TO God and start listening FOR God. And that requires silence. Silence is the language God speaks, and everything else is a translation. "As long as you know you are praying, you are not praying properly", says Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast. When everything we do is prayer, the fruit is an increase in love, patience and compassion for others, leaving behind the unmistakable taste of holiness.
In some religions, prayer is undertaken, not with the intention of influencing a deity, nor with any hope of prayers being directly answered, but in order to produce a harmonious state of mind. Prayer and meditation facilitate integration by allowing time for previously unrelated thoughts and feelings to interact. Being able to get in touch with one's deepest thoughts and feelings, and providing time for them to regroup themselves into new formations and combinations, are important aspects of the creative process, as well as a way of relieving tension and promoting mental health ... Human beings easily become alienated from their own deepest needs and feelings. Learning, thinking, innovation and maintaining contact with one's own inner world are all facilitated by solitude.
Blessed are You, Heart of my heart!
for You heed the cry of my spirit.
You are my strength and my protection;
into your hands I commend my soul.
My heart leaps as You come to my aid,
and my lament becomes
a song of exultation,
a shout of praise to You,
O my Comforter!
May the blessed light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you and warm your heart until it glows like a fire, so that a stranger may come and warm himself at it, and also a friend. May God always bless you, love you and keep you.
Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others; the core, the inner spring can best be refound through solitude.
I have found a loving, caring presence as I have listened to my dreams, listened to the silence in the middle of the night and meditated on scripture. In my deepest experience of worship and Eucharist, and in my time of quiet companionship with God, I have met a Divine Lover. I find this Loving One is always there desiring to draw me closer to Love. Again and again, I hear gentle suggestions, when I listen in the midst of troubles, that my best way through them is by practicing unconditional love.
"Compassion not only helps us co-operate with the movement of Christ's love, it also fulfils us by increasing our capacity to relate to others without which there is no maturity ... The spark in the soul draws a person deeper into the love of the Creator and of the world in a process of mutual enabling. It is impossible to love others in this way while nourishing prejudice, fear and grievances." Compassion invites us to times of silence and to radical trust ... "God, I trust in your sustaining love and believe that just as You give me the grace and desire to offer this, so You will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it."
If your spirit is not fit to see the Beloved, neither will your heart be a bright mirror, fit to reflect love. It is true that no eye is able to contemplate and marvel at Love's beauty, nor is it capable of understanding; one can no feel toward the Beloved as one feels toward the beauty of this world. But by abounding Grace, we have been given a mirror to reflect the Beloved, and this mirror is the heart. Look into your heart and there you will see Love's image.
Blessed are the consistent in heart; they shall contemplate the one.
Healthy are those whose passion is electrified by deep, abiding purpose; they shall regard the power that moves and shows itself in all things.
Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of love; they shall see God everywhere.
Resisting corruption are those whose natural reaction is sympathy and friendship; they shall be illuminated by a flash of lightning: the Source of the soul's movement in all creatures.
In the core of the human soul there is a central silence. It is here that God enters into the soul. A person finds 'unity and blessing in that little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time touches.' Here is to be found a light that 'wants to penetrate the simple core, the still desert ... to get into the secret, to which no one is privy, where it is satisfied by a light whose unity is greater than it's own. This core is a simple stillness...
The Beloved listens
as I dovetail words
into walls
and walk in winter landscapes.
None of the alien, snowbanked roads
lead home. Even as I speak,
the shadows shift
across the stones
I have tried
to mortar into place.
The beloved listens
and weaves willow silences
into my words.
The quietness of Love
builds me a better harbor
than words ever could,
a place from which to sail,
a place to remember
on the map I navigate by,
where the heart of the compass rose is home.
God truly wishes all to eat and drink deeply of Infinite Love. Alas, how few seek ardently and perseveringly to move beyond desiring only the things of this world that cannot satisfy the burning longing that has been placed in all human hearts to possess God's everlasting Love! ... It is possible for the contemplative to become so centered in the heart with the presence of the indwelling Christ that the thought and presence of the Beloved are always somewhere close to waking consciousness, even in sleep. Christ is operating, even in sleep, in dreams and in delicate movements of the heart, so that it can be said that such a contemplative never loses awareness of Love's presence, never stops "listening" to Love's voice.
Oh how our values fail us!
Beauty doesn't come from a package.
It shines as a whole.
Love doesn't come from a greeting card.
It dwells in the heart, radiating the soul.
May the light of love be shining
deep within your spirit
May the torch of mercy clear the path
and show the way
May the horn of plenty sound
so everyone can hear it
May the light of love be with you every day.