Anne Strader

October 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 9)

Autumn greetings, dear friends! The season of harvest and brilliant fall color is here. Soon winter will arrive; growing things will appear to die as they direct their energy below the surface to their root systems to prepare for the long winter. We become a bit more introspective as we, too, settle in for a quieter season after summer's activity. Perhaps our thoughts more naturally turn to the topic of death at this season as the year winds down to a close. But then, a New Year is born – a new beginning! Out of death, new life. So may our mantra be as we journey through this life toward its inevitable transition to the next. Our natural fear of the unknown experience of death is calmed by the sure knowledge that life continues . . . we die to this world only to be reborn into another. Out of death, new life.

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Our life is shorter than flowers

Anonymous

Our life is shorter than flowers.
Then shall we mourn?
No, we shall dance
Plant gardens
Dress in colors
And teach our children
To make the world more beautiful.
Because our life
Is shorter than flowers.

Without death there can be no change

Iyanla Vanzant Until Today

In describing the many "mini-deaths" we experience on our journey through life, John Rogers wrote, "We are born once into life, but in life we are re-born many times." We die to old ways of being to be reborn in our powers. We die to old beliefs to be reborn in the truth. We die to habits of need, dependency, and control to be reborn in reliance on Spirit. We die to fear of Spirit to be reborn into the spirit of fearlessness. As long as you are still breathing, death becomes what we commonly call change. Without death there can be no change.

To wake up before we die

Anonymous

How very good it is when
we wake up before we die.

Death is a purifer, like fire

Wendy Beckett Meditations on Joy

Klee died relatively young and his style changed as the inevitability of death became inescapable. With great seriousness in one of his last paintings, Klee announces that death is a purifier, like fire, and a means to fulfillment. This is the once terrible, seen as the most beautiful. This is the real power of joy, to make us certain that beneath all grief, the most fundamental of realities is joy itself.

The risk was not so much of dying but on not living properly

John Perkins The World Is As You Dream It

Risk. The word had a whole new meaning when uttered within the context of these jungles and the people who populated them. For most tribal people, the risk was not so much of dying but of not living properly. It was the quality of your time on earth, not the quantity, that was important. How different that dream from the one I had been taught! Where, I wondered, did we get the idea we must do everything possible to postpone the inevitable? What is it about the words more and longer that has made them assume such a paramount position in our language?

Death is not extinguishing the light

Rabindranath Tagore

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Death has nothing to do with going away

Rumi

Death has nothing to do with going away.
The sun sets
The moon sets
But they are not gone.

At death the soul witnesses an incredible energy release

Glenda Green Love Without End

At death, the soul witnesses an incredible energy release of that which was only on loan, and an even more wonderful homecoming of all that has been given you by the Creator. That which is commanded by your love is yours to hold forever. All who have shared your love will remain in union with you. That is the ultimate harvest.

When people have made peace with death

Elizabeth Sirkin Reviewing Our Lives

When people have made peace with death, they live with greater consciousness. Every day, every moment, becomes more complete in itself. According to the Talmud, we are not required to complete our life's task, but neither are we permitted to lay it down. Perhaps through life review we can reframe what our life task truly is. Perhaps through loneliness, vulnerability, fear and grief we can come to acceptance and to wisdom.

Return Home in Peace

Tu Weiming Graceful Passages

Your vital energy is returning to the Source
Like a flowing stream returning to ocean.
Heaven is our Father, Earth is our Mother.
All people are our brothers and sisters
And all things are our companions.
In this gentle peaceful journey,
You are forming one body with heaven and earth.
Entrust yourself in the transforming
and nourishing care of the Cosmos.
Listen to the voice of love in silence.
You have heard the Way;
Return Home in Peace.

The day of our death

Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ

One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but that it was merging with the moist soil in order to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, "You are pretending." Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including that leaf. The Buddha said, "When conditions are sufficient, the body reveals itself, and we say the body exists. When conditions are not sufficient, the body cannot be perceived by us, and we say the body does not exist." The day of our "death" is a day of our continuation in many other forms.

Love and death are strangely kin

Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Love and death are strangely kin.
We need love to be able to die serenely.

Moving toward old age and death with something like its stunning grace and courage

Frederick Buechner The Longing for Home

I recognize that even in the valley of the shadow of my own tangled thoughts there is something holy and unutterable seeking to restore my soul... I always stop and touch the coarse gray bark of one particular tree with my hand or cheek, which I suppose is a way of blessing it for being so strong and beautiful. Who knows how long it has been standing there wearing its foliage like a crown even though a part of it is dying? Because of that quality of sheer endurance one morning I found myself touching it not to bless it, but to ask its blessing, so that I myself might move toward old age and death with something like its stunning grace and courage.

Out of death new life arrives

Tom Bender and Shadow, Silence, Song

Out of death, the compost of one life, new life arrives in ever greater richness. Death does not separate us from what is past or is yet to come. Touch, honor, and listen for both, for they are part of what is now. Celebrate endings as well as beginnings in your life and work.

Read more about October 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 9)

November 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 10)

Quiet Greetings, dear friends, and blessings of the Silence to you all! We come again to the topic that brings us into being, encircles us, and holds us all together as one. Silence is blessed in our noisy, clamorous world, but it is so much more than just the absence of noise. It is a quality in inner stillness, a purposeful turning of our attention to that inner voice that longs to be heard, a listening attitude so that we may apprehend whatever the Beloved would have us hear. We come together in Silence as one in the One; even though we may not be consciously aware of it, our Spirits are nurtured and blessed to be together in gratitude for the gift of Silence and the gift of this widespread community of souls.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

John O'Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us

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.

A stillness, a healing quiet comes over the landscape

Thomas Berry The Great Community of Earth

In the early evening we see the stars begin to appear as the sun disappears over the horizon. The light of day gives way to the darkness of night. A stillness, a healing quiet comes over the landscape. It's a moment when some other world makes itself known, a numinous presence beyond human understanding. We experience the vast realms of space overwhelming the limitations of our human minds. As the sky turns golden and the clouds reflect the blazing colors of evening, we participate for a moment in the forgiveness, the peace, the intimacy of things with each other.

Silence is that place just before the voice of God

Joan Chittister

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.

Putting an end to exterior chatter

St. Julia Billiart Women of Vision

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.

Silence foreshadows and houses that fertile consciousness of Being

Marsha Sinetar A Way Without Words

Silence foreshadows and houses that fertile consciousness of Being (the unitive state) within all of us. Progressively, silence calls us into this awareness, until at some point we live in it, or realize it lives us. Then, each leaf, flower or bud reminds us of that Heart or Reality or Void in which we all have our life and being.

Silence is power

Nan Merrill

In silence and solitude you will come to meet the Beloved of your heart. For Silence is power, the power of the Divine Lover blessing and transforming you. Seek always the Eternal Flame ever shining in your heart, and let yourself be nourished and refreshed in the Silence.

The silence of the forest is my bride

Thomas Merton Dancing in the Water of Life

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...

I will come to you in the silence

David Haas You Are Mine

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.

This night-shattering dawn

Ronald Willis

How quiet –
This night-shattering
Dawn.

When I am silent

Rumi

When I am silent, I fall into that place where everything is music.

Silences are the only scrap of Christianity we still have left

Ladislaus Boros God Is With Us

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."

Loneliness transforms to aloneness

Dolores Fruiht

Loneliness transforms to aloneness in silence.

One unknown voice of sacred Silence

Richard Bachtold Poems of Other Worlds

I have faith ... that one unknown voice of sacred Silence will prayerfully proclaim the advent of an everlasting light during the darkest night ...

Silence incurs and things become clear

Antonio McKinney

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."

Read more about November 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 10)

September 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 8)

Is there enough silence for the Word to be heard?

Warm Greetings, Dear Friends! The long, lazy, days of summer will soon be a bit shorter as the season turns and cooler weather arrives. As we return from vacation trips and arrive at these waning days of summer, our thoughts naturally turn again to our work in the world. "Work is love made visible," according to Kahlil Gibran. Thinking of it in such a way changes everything! No matter what work we may do, whether it be lowly and menial or vitally important in the eyes of the world, how blessed and fulfilling it becomes when we are ever conscious that in the doing of it we are shining our love-light into the world. As we sit in the Silence, remembering that whatever we do is of God and God is always present in it, may we be blessed and in turn, bless the world with our contributions to the well-being of all.

The great work of life

Jerry Thomas Body of Time, Soul of Eternity

The great work of life is not to save the world but to attain God Realization which, by being in the process of doing so, you have a tremendously powerful and positive effect on the world condition and consciousness.

To give birth to ourselves

Eric Fromm

Our main task in life is to give birth to ourselves, to become what we potentially are.

Work offered with love

Barbara Taylor, Nan Merrill Peace Planet

Work offered with love
by a soul at peace
breaks through the darkness
so the light shines through:
One heart blessing all hearts.

At the heart of life is service

Mother Teresa

At the heart of silence is prayer.
At the heart of prayer is faith.
At the heart of faith is life.
At the heart of life is service.

All good things at the price of labor

Michael J. Gelb Da Vinci Decoded

Leonardo da Vinci knew that God helps those who help themselves and that this could be hard work. The labor that brings us all good things is more than just our effort in the outer world — it is a reflection of our inner work and ethical awareness. Leonardo's prayer illustrated this: "Thou, O God, dost sell unto us all good things at the price of labor."

They're working

Kevin Sullivan, Mary Jordan Prison Angel

Dr. Torres had never seen teeth as bad as those he saw at La Mesa. "This stuff wasn't in any of my books." He noticed that the worst problems often belonged to the toughest men and women in the prison, and even the hardest cases cried when he showed them their new teeth in the mirror.

Some of the inmates he worked on still stay in touch with him. "They call me all the time and tell me, 'Hey, I'm working over here, I'm working over there,'" he says. "The jobs are no big deal, but they're working, which they couldn't do before, because people didn't accept them. Nobody except Mother Antonia cared for them."

Spirit and work are linked among indigenous people

Malidoma Some The Healing Wisdom of Africa

Spirit and work are linked among indigenous people because human work is viewed as an intensification of the work that Spirit does in nature... Individuals, as extensions of Spirit, come into the world with a purpose. At its core, the purpose of an individual is to bring beauty, harmony, and communion to earth.

Now do heart work

Rainer Maria Rilke

Work of sight is done.
Now do heart work
on the pictures within you.

My essential task

Martin Buber The Way of Man

The environment which I feel to be the natural one, the situation which has been assigned to me as my fate, the things that happen to me day after day, the things that claim me day after day -- these contain my essential task and such fulfillment of existence as is open to me... The Baal Shem teaches that no encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance. The people we live with or meet with, the animals that help us with our farm work, the soil we till, the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall ourselves be debarred from true fulfilled existence.

Serving with a peace-filled heart

Jamie Sams Dancing the Dream

When we are willing to commit to 51% service to self and 48% to others, we have achieved a balance that allows us to be effective in life. Whether we have service-related jobs or volunteer makes no difference. The commitment to making our world a better place for everyone is the key to any job. On one level, we agree to be role models, and because of that devotion to being our personal best, we are forced to examine our personal integrity, our willingness to change and grow, and our commitment to doing what is needed when it is needed, serving with a peace-filled heart.

To seek out beauty in our work

David Whyte Crossing the Unknown Sea

To seek out beauty in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.

When there is order there is little to do

John Heider The Tao of Leadership

Selflessness gives one center.
Center creates order.
When there is order, there is little to do.

My work is God's work

Joan Chittister There is a Season

I finally came to know that my work is God's work, unfinished by God because God meant it to be finished by me.

The goal of work

Tom Bender Silence, Song and Shadows

The goal of singing a song is not to reach the end as quickly as possible. It is a state of creating harmony, beauty, growth and understanding. The goal of work, as a sacred art, is to use the need for a product or service to develop the greatest possible power on the object, and the users. Sacred work puts the mind on service to the heart as well.

Read more about September 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 8)

July/August 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 7)

Summer Greetings, dear Friends of Silence! Here we are in the midst of summer already, along with all its sometimes frantic activities. School is out and the kids are glorying in swimming, amusement parks, picnics, and playing hard all day. Parents, meanwhile, may be wondering how to slow the pace down a bit! Times of solitude are as necessary as breathing during this busy, active season, but where do we find them? An early morning walk along a deserted beach or a mountain vista at twilight come to mind, but what about at home, in our everyday surroundings? Perhaps an early morning interlude in our own gardens, or a brief afternoon “time out” will help. The silent moments of solitude are there if we look for them and are attentive enough to recognize them, sink into them, and allow ourselves to be nurtured and renewed by them. Happy Summer, everyone — see you in September!

Time spent in holy solitude

Nan Merrill Lumen Christi . . . Holy Wisdom

Time spent in holy solitude can silence the noisy world ever at work in our minds.

Vocation to Solitude

Thomas Merton Thoughts in Solitude

Vocation to Solitude — To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over that land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars... to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into the bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of life into a living and vigilant silence.

Solitude is not loneliness

Br. David Stendl-Rast

A hermit must have a deep experience of communion with humanity. Without this, you cannot be a hermit, because you would only be lonely. You would not be really solitary. To be alone and cut off from others would make you very unhappy, but to be alone, and to be deeply united with others, in deep communion, that is a possibility for which many people long. That is what I call solitude—over and against loneliness.

The glory of being alone

Paul Tillich The Eternal Now

Language... has created the word "loneliness"
to express the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word "solitude"
to express the glory of being alone.

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves

Deng Ming-Dao 365 TAO

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.

Full of God

Serbian proverb

Solitude is full of God.

Solitude is the human condition

Maggie Ross

Solitude is the human condition, the universal vocation to be human. It is the willingness, with Love indwelling, to go to the heart of pain to find new life and share it with the world even though you may be separated from it physically. It is from this commitment to be focused through the narrow gate of solitude that self-emptying love is outpoured, and the heart of the community, the heart of its pain, is transformed into the heart of joy.

Dignifying the name of solitude

Mary C. Morrison Let Evening Come

At the empty nest turning point of middle age, something arose in me, and my journal became full of entries about being alone. I discovered that two entries written 10 years apart were almost identical. I had not yet learned to dignify "alone" with the name of Solitude, but I knew what I wanted, what I needed—as if my life was depriving me of something as essential as the air I breathed.

How gracious is Solitude

William Wordsworth The Prelude IV 354

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Stay close to the solitude of nature

Joyce Sequichie Hifler A Cherokee Feast of Days

It is in the quiet times that we build our strengths and know we have something to rely on. Solitude is not withdrawal into a place where no one and no sound can penetrate. It is a sweet moment of peace with or without other people that lets us re-center and reset the rhythm of the mind, body and spirit. It is wisdom to stay close to the solitude of nature to keep us young and pliable.

In deepest solitude

St. John of the Cross I Came Into the Unknowing

In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering
rising above all science.

Most callings come in silence

Robert J. Furey Called By Name

Most callings come in silence.
Not even a whisper.
Silence. . . .

Solitude can be the best place to find your answers. Some say that in silence and solitude you find who you really are because here there are no forces to confuse you or lead you astray. Some people seek solitude to hear the voices of their hearts and souls. Some seek solitude to hear the voice of God. Many go to solitude to seek one and wind up finding the other as well.

My life is not real unless there is time alone

May Sarton

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange — that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here ...

Solitude means never living apart from one's self

Parker Palmer A Hidden Wholeness

Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one's self. It is not about the absence of other people, it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others.

The strong grows in solitude

Khalil Gibran

The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away.

Read more about July/August 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 7)

June 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 6)

Warm Greetings, dear Friends of Silence! The music of nature encourages our souls to sing along these beautiful days of early summer. I've just completed a landscaping project in my back yard, and each morning now when I wake and open my blinds, I am struck by the beauty of nature's symphony: the silence of early morning, broken only by birdsong, and the humming along of the awakening world. Truly it is "the music of the spheres," as an old and beloved hymn poetically states:

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears,
All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.

It is easy to be so caught up in the everyday tasks of busy lives that we miss the music. We are able to hear that kind of music only when we listen for it with the awareness of open hearts, and then our spirits come alive.

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Immersed in ancient rhythms

Sigurd F. Olson Heron Dance

When one finally arrives at the point where schedules are forgotten, and becomes immersed in ancient rhythms, one begins to live.

Harmony is not created by having only one musical tune

Jamie Sams Dancing the Dream

The older we grow, the more we tend to become set in our habits, our outlooks on life, our mental assessments of possibilities. The more flexibly balanced we become, the less chaos we encounter. Harmony is not created by having only one musical tune, but by the blending of many tunes that create a symphony of sound. Individual tunes work together, creating beauty rather than discord. Balance is found in living harmoniously, with flexibility and periods of silence, accepting events as part of the mystery unfolding in our lives.

They sing with their hearts

Louis de Wohl Citadel of God

"There they go, chanting again."
"Maybe that is what really matters," Equitius said.
"What? The chanting?"
"You. Constantly getting in touch with God. Getting others to do it, too. They sing with their hearts, these people. For all I know, they may keep the world alive by what they're doing."

bird songs in the breeze

Larry Curtis

bird songs in the breeze
antiphonal echoing
window to window

Every leaf and flower and grass blade sings

Wendell Berry Remembering

The houses are clean and white, and great trees stand among them and spread over them. The fields lie around the town, divided by rows of such trees as stand in the town and in the woods, each field more beautiful than all the rest. Over town and fields the one great song sings, and is answered everywhere; every leaf and flower and grass blade sings. And in the fields and the town, walking, standing, or sitting under the trees, resting and talking together in the peace of a Sabbath profound and bright, are people of such beauty that he weeps to see them. He sees that these are the membership of one another and of the place and of the song or light in which they live and move.

Called to become the Great Song

Br. David Stendl-Rast

Each one of us is called to become the Great Song that comes out of the Silence.

We miss the music

Giuseppe Mazzini

Music is the harmonious voice of creation;
an echo of the invisible world.

Love is a better music teacher than duty

Albert Einstein The Heron Dance Book of Love and Gratitude

From the age of six to fourteen I took violin lessons but had no luck with my teachers, for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing. I really began to learn only after I had fallen in love with Mozart's sonatas. The attempt to reproduce their singular grace compelled me to improve my technique. I believe, on the whole, that love is a better teacher than sense of duty.

The bitter with the sweet make one great harmony

Unknown

This is the greatest skill of all, to take the bitter with the sweet and make it beautiful, to take the whole of life in all its moods, its strengths and weaknesses, and of the whole make one great and celestial harmony.

Love, light, and death are one in his music

Jacques Henry Mozart the Freemason

Mozart's music belongs to all humanity, for the feelings that it expresses are not only his own. Carried to the spiritual elevation that universal symbols require, the symphony is untainted by petty individualism. The music belongs to the world of hope and serenity, not to any particular religion. His work was never a cry but rather a continual revelation. Love, light, and death are one in his music, to such a degree that a single theme sometimes contains all these. Mozart apprehends the human being, their feelings, pain, and hope, then, he leaves us alone in the light, facing the revelation of his own reason for being.

Music vibrates in the memory

Percy B. Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.

Drinking at the source makes the blood sing

Jean-Yves Leloup The Sacred Embrace

To see all things at their origin, their beginnings, puts us in kinship with all that lives: trees, birds, stars seem foreign to us only inasmuch as we perceive them outside of our common origin with them. To drink at the source of all that lives and breathes expands the heart and makes the blood sing, echoing of all the vital fluids of the world. To dwell near the beginnings is to draw infinitely near to that which creates both the unity and diversity of all beings.

There are songs in stone as well as in sound

Toni Bender Song and Shadows, Silence

There are songs in stone as well as in sound, which overflow with rejoicing at the bountiful riches of Creation. . . . We need silences to be free from the words that come between us and reality. We need silence to still our chattering minds and focus on the new creation to which we are constantly giving birth. There is a music to silence and a dance within stillness which is lacking in our lives and communities.

Music is free

Sylvia Couturie No Tears in Ireland

Lying on my back under the starlit sky, I gave myself up completely to the lovely sounds of Irish music. It was a magical sound, I said, beating with my fingers happily and humming the tunes. The music stopped for a few minutes while the musicians rested. As I lay motionless in the silence of the night, I listened to the quiet voice of my heart. "Music is free," it said. "Music belongs to everyone. You only have to listen." Some knowledge is full of bliss.

Read more about June 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 6)

May 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 5)

Greetings, dear Friends of Silence. Each leaf of a tree is an entity unto itself, yet could not exist alone. Each leaf, though separate and individual, is part of the one tree. So each of us is unique, with our own special traits, innate abilities and interests. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like you or me; we are each one of a kind. Yet we are all part of the One, the Whole, the All of creation; we are all one as well as unique individuals. When one is hurt, all of us suffer in some way. When one is demeaned, we are all shamed. And when one of us gains understanding, each of us receives a little more light. Each of us contributes to the growth of all as we work toward our own spiritual maturity. In the Silence, may we continue to gain understanding and evolve as individual parts of the Whole, knowing our oneness with the All.

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The glory of God is in everyone

Marianne Williamson

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

The portrait of unity, no separation

John Shelby Spong Eternal Life: A New Vision

God is a glimpse into the meaning of the totality of human experiences, where we recognize that we are part of an ultimate grasping after a universal consciousness with which we are one and in which we are whole. . . . God is present whenever a person transcends human boundaries and sees the portrait of unity, not separation. God is the journey beyond the fear of loneliness into a new wholeness . . .

The world is one country

Baha'u'llah

The world is one country, and humankind its citizens.

Outbursts of singularity

John Philip Newell A New Harmony

. . for the world's well-being and for our own individual well-being, we need to know that all things are interwoven and that each strand in the tapestry is holy. We need to know that our distinct races, our countless species, our many wisdom traditions, our children, and the men and women of every nation are wonderful "outbursts of singularity," each carrying within them the life of the One.

All things share the same breath

Chief Seattle

All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the human, the air . .

To return to a state of oneness

Peggy Jenkins

To discover joy is to return to a state of oneness with the universe.

The human race is a single being

Saadi

The human race is a single being
Created from one jewel.
If one member is struck
All must feel the blow.
Only someone who cares for the pain of others
Can truly be called human.

Love unifies the divine web of life

Nan Merrill Lumen Christi . . . Holy Wisdom

A sacred breath radiating Love unifies the divine web of life.
Any broken part affects all of Creation.

Unique yet part of the whole

Lena Lees

A powerful meditation when contemplating the oneness of everything is to find something's unique qualities. For example, observing an island's wholeness and then focusing upon the uniqueness of a single stone. . . . this meditation is simple but powerful. . . . Other examples to meditate upon (other than an individual stone on the island beach) are faces in a crowd or a leaf on a tree. Each person (in the crowd) is unique and yet (at that very moment) part of the whole. The same is true for leaves on the trees. Practicing this deceptively easy meditation helps each of us to see reality.

Oneness with the universe

Black Elk

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

That moment of unity os the atom of God

Mark Nepo The Book of Awakening

. . . as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core, I come upon the one common center where all lives begin. In that center, we are one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both unique and the same. For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep enough into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all—that moment of unity is the atom of God.

Everything merges in one harmony

Wen Siang

Happy in the morning
I open my cottage door;
A clear breeze blowing
Comes straight in.
The first sun
Lights the leafy trees;
The shadows it casts
Are crystal clear.
Serene,
In accord with my heart,
Everything merges
In one harmony . . .

Members of the same human family

Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

Only when we have the courage to cross the road and look in one another's eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family.

When will we once again be one?

Madeleine L' The Irrational Season

When will we once again be one? Perhaps galaxy by galaxy, solar system by solar system, planet by planet, all creation must be redeemed. Where were we when the morning stars sang together, and all the children of God shouted for joy?

All life is interrelated

Martin Luther King Jr.

All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no one can be totally rich even with a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no one can be totally healthy, even with a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made.

Read more about May 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 5)

April 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 4)

Springtime greetings, dear friends. Even though there may still be some cold days, we've come around again to the time of year when nature outdoes herself, gloriously bursting forth with the burgeoning life that has lain dormant and hidden during the cold months of winter. Even the most pragmatic among us might feel like waxing poetic when in all directions we see only the beauty of the earth and feel again the soft, gentle air of spring. Surely the presence and glory of God are never more obvious than during a beautiful spring! It's time for us to grow and bloom as well., for we are part of nature; as new life bursts forth in nature, so it does in us when we allow it. Happy Springtime, friends!

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Nature brings beauty

Unknown

Nature brings beauty to every time and season.

The sounds of the living word are louder than the sounds of the machine world

James Thornton A Field Guide to the Soul

We are all native speakers of the language of life. To talk with what lives, we have to listen patiently and quietly for a long time. We have to listen in a place where we can hear, where the sounds of the living world are louder than the sounds of the machine world. If we have the patience and the silence we can begin to hear. If many of us listen, many of us will hear. We will learn the language of the living Earth, and it will become our language again.

Connection to nature within ourselves

Jacob Needleman Time and the Soul

The need is for the connection to nature within ourselves; only then can we understand how to act toward nature outside ourselves. Along with the obvious crimes our culture is committing against the natural world, we would be wise to remember that the main crimes are the crimes against our inner nature. From these inner crimes all the outer evil arises. This is the teaching of wisdom.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own

Charles Dickens

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is a succession of changes so gentle and easy we can scarcely mark their progress . . .

Secretly nature seeks to ferret out God's track

Meister Eckhart

Nature's intent is neither food, nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else in which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to ferret out the track on which God may be found. . .

Weave for us a garment of brightness

Tewa Pueblo Native American Payer

Thus weave for us
a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly
where grass is green,
O our mother the earth,
O our father the sky.

Earth's crammed with heaven

Elizabeth Browning

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.

Turning again to the earth

Rachel Carson

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Finding tongues in trees

William Shakespeare

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

We're all part of nature

Robert Lax

I believe we are part of the universal rhythmic process because we're all a part of nature--we are in it and of it. So like the ingoing and outgoing waves, we breathe in a similar way--we flow. Cosmic creativity and creative evolution are always going on. Everything is always singing.

Magic birds were dancing

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Magic birds were dancing
in the mystic marsh.
The grass swayed with them,
and the shallow waters,
and the earth fluttered under them.
The earth was dancing with the cranes,
and the low sun, and the wind and sky.

If a person walks in the woods and listens

George Washington Carver

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

Something in nature knows what it is doing

Marv and Nancy Hiles An Almanac for the Soul

No matter what the weather looks like outside the window, life is warming up. Something in nature knows what it is doing; even if from time to time winter icily touches the napes of our necks with its cold fingers. . . . Woods will fill with black-birds and grackles, and swollen buds will cling like small birds to wet branches. . . . Old oaks sleep as long as they can, while the rest of creation exhibits an aching restlessness to move on. As everything begins to move, an almost forgotten song plays in our chests, the music of beginning again. The early small birds flit here and there on the rising winds; a lone, red-winged blackbird sits unmoving in the empty cherry tree . . . waiting . . . To live is to change, to move through one transition after another, to reinvent one's life, as needed. . . .

An invisible fecundity in all visible things

Thomas Merton Hagia Sophia

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom . . . There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a foundation of action and joy. It rises up in gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

Nature is too thin a screen

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.

There is a way that nature speaks

Linda Hogan

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.

This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers

Izumi Shikibu

Come quickly -- as soon as these blossoms open, they fall. This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers.

Read more about April 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 4)

March 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 3)

Greetings, dear friends! In many parts of the country, this is the season we begin to see tiny miracles of creation becoming visible: little tips of green as the early spring bulbs push up through the ground, tender green buds bursting from bare branches of trees . . . and we begin to feel creative stirrings in our souls right along with nature. How do we experience those stirrings? What exactly is creativity? As we go into silence with the questions and feelings we may have, we remember that we are called to be co-creators with the Divine. We don't need to paint a masterpiece, or write a best-seller, though for some that happens. What we do need are ways to express our own, personal, unique creative yearnings. Listen carefully, dear friends: the answers will begin to flow, and we will begin to bloom right along with those spring flowers!

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God is creatively present in everyone in every moment whether we are aware of it or not

Paul Tillich The Eternal Now

God is creatively present in everyone in every moment whether we are aware of it or not. But when we are in the state of silent gratefulness, we are aware of God's Presence.

An unexhaustible wellspring of creativity

Danil Andreev The Rose of the World

Creative work, like love, is not an exclusive gift bestowed on only a chosen few. A few now possess sanctity and moral vision, heroism and wisdom, genius and talent. But all that is merely activation of the potential dormant within every soul. A sea of love, an unexhaustible wellspring of creativity, bubbles behind the consciousness of each one of us. . . . All creative work that is done in its own name and for its own sake is divine in nature. Through it, people elevate themselves and fill their own hearts and the hearts of those around them with God.

Unless we are creators we are not fully alive

Madeleine L'Engle Walking on Water

Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive . . . Remember, the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.

When we grow radishes we participate in creation

Joan Chittister There is a Season

When we grow radishes in a small container in a city apartment, we participate in creation. We sustain the globe. When we sweep the street in front of a house in the dirtiest city in the country, we bring new order to the universe. We tidy the Garden of Eden. We make God's world new again. When we repair what has been broken or paint what is old or give away what we have earned that is above and beyond our own sustenance, we stoop down and scoop up the earth and breathe into it new life again, as God did one morning in time only to watch it unfold, unfold, and unfold through the ages.

God speaks to us through the element of creation

J. Philip Newell Christ of the Celts

Just as God speaks to us through the words of scripture, so God speaks to us through the elements of creation. The cosmos is like a living sacred text that we can learn to read and interpret. Just as we prayerfully ponder the words of the Bible in Christian practice, and as other traditions study their sacred texts, so we are invited to listen to the life of creation as an ongoing, living utterance of God.

Creativity will be meaningful

David Bohm

In the future, creativity will be meaningful only if it is relevant to all humanity.

Flood with divine creativity

Marcus J. Borg Conflict, Holiness, and Politics

Reality is permeated, indeed flooded, with divine creativity, nourishment, and care.

With the word creative we stand under a mystery

Pamela Travers Creators on Creating

With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light—by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected. It is useless, possibly even profane, to ask for an explanation.

Creativity is a spiritual force

Julia Cameron The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal

Creativity is a spiritual force. The force that drives the green fuse through the flower, as Dylan Thomas defined his idea of the life force, is the same urge that drives us toward creation. There is a central will to create that is part of our human heritage and potential. Because creation is always an act of faith, and faith is a spiritual issue, so is creativity. As we strive for our highest selves, our spiritual selves, we cannot help but be more aware, more proactive, and more creative.

Going inside the act of creation to become what they are creating

Kent Nerburn Intuition

You do not have to be in some setting hallowed by greatness, or in the presence of an artist honored around the world, for art to move you. Art can work its magic any time you are in the presence of a work created by someone who has gone inside the act of creation to become what they are creating. When this takes place, time stands still, and if our hearts are open to this experience, our spirits soar and our imaginations are unfettered.

Every artistic creation is an attempt to recover something of the original sense of order

John Haines The Nature of Nature

Every artistic creation is an attempt to recover something of the original sense of order, of right proportion. Our capacity for wonder, for awe, our sense of the magical and the sacred, has its source here—in what we can call a state of grace, equilibrium. I suppose that what we refer to as sacred is so because of some primal relation between ourselves and the world. We feel that a part of our being is hallowed or blessed by this, that some acts of ours enhance this feeling, while others violate it.

Colleagues and co-creators with God

Martin Bell Return of the Wolf

We are not victims. We are not guests. You and I are colleagues and co-creators with God—living in the midst of ongoing creation and called upon to celebrate everything that is.

The creative process is generation and birth

Erich Neumann Art and the Creative Unconscious

The creative process is generation and birth as well as transformation and rebirth. The perpetual self-renewal and the dependence on grace of the person who opens to create are a human parallel to the eternal rebirth of all that is created.

Read more about March 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 3)

February 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 2)

Warm, loving greetings, dear friends! Even as I type this greeting, the ever-present question arises: What is love? Can we really define it? Is it necessary, or even desirable, that we do so? It isn't really possible, is it? Love is something we can feel or aspire to be, but it doesn't lend itself easily to the kind of definitions our reason-driven culture seems to demand. While it isn't possible to define love, I am drawn to Carl Jung's juxtaposition of love and power: "Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." Perhaps it would be fruitful to take this idea into our Silence and listen for a deeper understanding that might be revealed.

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More important now for me to love them

Beverly Sills

I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity . . . I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not—more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.

We hunger to be loved

Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.

Love seeketh not itself to please

William Blake

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

Love is the answer

Dr. Bernie S. Siegel 365 Prescriptions for the Soul

The greatest truth I know about life is that love is the answer. If you ask me what the question is, I will tell you it is every question you could ever ask. Love is always the answer to every question and problem. We are here to love and be loved and learn a few things in the process. I can never be wrong when I choose to love. Love rewards me by bringing meaning to my life.

The great dance of love

J. Philip Newell Christ of the Celts

The whole cosmos is a Self-giving of God. And we will find our place in the great dance only to the extent that we love.

Love is the only force

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.

Love feels no burden

Thomas a Kempis

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility . . . though weary, it is not tired . . . though alarmed, it is not confounded . . .

Love, like a flame

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Love, like a flame, cannot fail to give out light.

Love gives naught but itself

Kahlil Gibran The Prophet

Love gives naught but itself and takes
naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love . . .
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

All strings which are touched by Love must sound

Mechtild of Magdeburg

The Holy Spirit is our harpist, and all strings which are touched by Love must sound.

Living in accordance with the laws of Love

Nan Merrill Walking With Wisdom

Blessed are those whose hands and heart
have maintained justice,
who have lived in accordance with
the laws of Love;
those faithful to Love Consciousness
will hear the good counsel, the
guidance of Wisdom in their hearts.
The fruits of integrity, justice,
sharing, and compassion
bear only blessing.

Real love is always difficult

Tracy Cochran, Jeff Zaleski Transformations: Awakening to the Sacred in Ourselves

Real love is always difficult, as the German poet Rilke said, because "it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for the sake of another, it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances." Eventually, love forces us to turn within. In the Symposium, his meditation on love, Plato called love a child of fullness and emptiness, suggesting that there is a kind of desolation built into every love. There comes a moment in the progress of most loves when lovers feel isolated and unfulfilled, because they have discovered that they cannot find real and enduring meaning by reaching outside themselves, clinging to their lover. . . They may see that it is only by daring to open to the silence at the center of themselves that they can begin to feel the presence of the One whom they have been searching for all along.

Before and after love

The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

There is the same difference in a person before and after he or she is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too and that is its real function.

A vessel of Divine Love let loose upon the world

Joan Chittister

My interior life is a walk through darkness with the God within who leads us beyond and out of ourselves to become a vessel of Divine Love let loose upon the world.

You will be love

Osho

When I say, "Love yourself," this is for those who have never gone inside, because they always can. . . . They are bound to understand only a language of duality. Love yourself—that means you are dividing yourself into two, the lover and the loved. You may not have thought about it, but if you go inside you will not love yourself, you will be love.

Read more about February 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 2)

January 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 1)

Happy New Year, dear Friends of Silence! As we embark on yet another year through this life of ours, let us do so knowing that we are filled with Light. Though sometimes we may feel we are lost, and though there are always many parts of this old world that are hurting and appear to be in deep darkness, we must remember that the Light is always present, all around and within us. It is up to us to turn, just slightly, and find that all-encompassing Light within ourselves. When we do, we find also that we can see it without. Let us begin this new year in full awareness of the Light that we are and the Light that surrounds us. We are called to be Light-bearers, dear friends!

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Purer channels for God's light

Marianne Williamson

As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be

The Light existing before all else was made

Teilhard de Chardin Hymn of the Universe

Far from light emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness, it is the Light, existing before all else was made which, patiently, surely, eliminates our darkness. As for creatures, of ourselves, we are but emptiness and obscurity. . . . Radiant Word, Blazing Power . . . reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.

Indifference dims the light

Elizabeth Gray Vining Quiet Pilgrimage

"Live up to the light that you have and more will be given to you" is a familiar Quaker saying. Indifference and inattentiveness dim the light, overzealousness causes it to flicker. William Penn warned against "running before we are sent." We can seldom be absolutely sure that we are following the light: psychology has taught us that the voice of the unconscious self may take on a spurious resemblance to a divine call. We can only do the best we know at the time and trust that the Spirit, the Eternal Goodness, Reality, The Christ Within, God -- the name seems to me to matter little -- may be able to make use of the willingness alone, as if just wishing to be sensitive to the light removed some obstacle to the movement of the divine in human affairs.

Give light

Erasmus

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Against the light of God's goodness

Albert Schweitzer

Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?

A reflection of the true light

Omraam M. Aivanhov

You must not think of the light of the sun as the true Light of God. It is a reflection of the true Light. That other Light, that we can neither know nor comprehend, is so subtle, so highly potent that, for us . . . it is darkness.

Light dwells deep within each of us

Nan Merrill Lumen Christi . . . Holy Wisdom

Light dwells deep within each of us
ready to radiate forth
as our will freely surrenders
in alignment with our soul's purpose.
We are here on Earth to lift and deepen
our own awareness and that of creation:
co-partners in the Divine Plan
for the divinization of all creation.
Seek within and find the Source
of Love and Light.
Shine in unity with all whose joy
is to co-birth as a light
in the world.

The Source of light

Peace Pilgrim

For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections.

Thus the Light rains

Ezra Pound Canto IV

Thus the Light rains, thus pours,
the liquid and rushing crystal
beneath the knees of the gods.

Hearing the light

Wendell Berry Remembering

And now above and beyond the birds' song, Andy hears a more distant singing, whether of voices or instruments, sounds or words, he cannot tell. It is at first faint, and then stronger, filling the sky and touching the ground, and the birds answer it. He understands presently that he is hearing the light; he is hearing the sun, which now has risen, though from the valley it is not yet visible. The light's music resounds and shines in the air and over the countryside, drawing everything into the infinite, sensed but mysterious pattern of its harmony. From every tree and leaf, grass blade, stone, bird, and beast, it is answered and again answers. The creatures sing back their names. But more than their names. They sing their being. The world sings. The sky sings back. It is one song, the song of the many members of one love, the whole song sung and to be sung, resounding, in each of its moments. And it is light.

Read more about January 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 1)

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