The fence around wisdom
Silence is the fence around wisdom.
There is no future in spending our present worrying about our past.
Nan Merrill
Where wisdom makes her home
Where Wisdom makes her home
peace and harmony abide
Suffering becomes redemptive
and quiet joy resides within the pain...
Peace and harmony abide
radiating out to a wounded world
And quiet joy resides within the pain --
within the dazzling darkness ...
Radiating out to a wounded world
silent messengers of healing --
Within the dazzling darkness
compassion and justice reign ...
September 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 8)
WISHING EACH OF YOU BLESSINGS, my friends, in this new autumn season of ripening and reaping the fruits of summer re-creation: a good time to awaken to the NOW moment, to be aware as nature prepares herself for yet another transformation. While in the silence, doing nothing, Autumn comes -- the leaves turn color and let go by themselves.
Anonymous
You can't change the past
But you can ruin the present
By worrying about the future.
Jean Houston
Manual for the Peacemaker
Embrace the open moment, recognizing that each moment may be experienced as a new birth and as a spectacularly open time, when what we do can make a difference to whether the human race grows or dies.
Wittgenstein
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, eternal life is theirs who live in the present.
Marty Cohen
Time and space are the very music of God's harp, for each moment in time is empty of other moments, and each part of space is empty of other parts, so that we will not have to hear too much at once. That is why there are seasons.
Ping Hsin
The orphan boat of my heart
Crosses the unsteady, undulant
Ocean of Time.
Stuart Wilde
Silent Power
Non-action is accepting life and not forcing it: being aware of the ebb and flow of the seasons, aware of the spirituality of all things, aware that in the great abundance of the God-Force, there is no time. It is knowing when to act, and not acting until you know. You can wait forever if you have to. You are eternal... It is being the silent person who is moving relentlessly toward and away from restriction -- towards your goal, one step at a time.
Arthur Waskow
Godwrestling - Round 2
I have learned to understand time and thought as a spiral: neither a straight line that must go always forward, even into a precipice, nor a circle that must remain forever stuck in repeating past experience. Instead, a spiral, which curves always backward in order to curve forward. What makes time and life into a spiral instead of a straight line or an endless circle is setting aside time for reflection, rest, renewal. That renewal time is the curve that moves the spiral onward. This lets us re-view where we have been, so that we can go forward.
William Blake
Auguries of Innocence
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flow,
Hold Infinity in the palms of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee
The Call and the Echo
The tree of life is one's inner axis that grows from the depths of the earth and reaches to the heavens. It connects together the primal opposites of the temporal and the eternal. It is life lived from the "still center of the turning world" and it embraces the deepest human mystery: that we are eternal beings living in a world of time.
Carol K. Anthony
All things are accomplished through waiting. Time is the vehicle. If we perseveringly maintain a correct attitude, the force of inner truth is able to work. It penetrates gradually to all that needs to be influenced. To rush anything, or impatiently force results, only causes setback. At best we achieve surface reforms that in time revert to the same problems. Steadfast waiting -- working sincerely to hold correct principles -- leads to slow but permanent changes for the better.
Alberto Villoldo, Erik Jendresen
Journey to the Island of the Sun
Time ... The ancient ones knew that there was a relationship between time and light. That light has no time. Nothing can travel at the speed of light but light itself. If we approach the speed of light, we must become light. When we become light -- a Child of the Sun -- then time is dissolved. We all know that our deeds today affect tomorrow, that our smallest gestures influence destiny, that the future of our species changes constantly with every action of every living thing on Earth. Time is polychronic AND monochronic -- it does not fly like an arrow only. It also turns. Like a wheel. (He traced a circle in the air with his fingertip.) When these two kinds of time intersect, that is sacred time, ritual time, when you can influence the past and summon destiny from the future.
Thomas Merton
The whole thing boils down to giving ourselves in prayer a chance to realize that we have what we seek. We don't have to rush after it. It was there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. There is in all this a sense of the unfolding of mystery in time, a reverence for gradual growth.
Joseph Campbell
Power of Myth
The tree of life, the axis mundi is the central point, the pole around which all revolves. The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you are doing in the temporal experience -- this is the mythological experience.
Making-friends-with-time
SILENCE is making-friends-with-time.
July-August 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 7)
EVERY BLESSING, friends! May the love you are and share with others ever increase that beauty might flourish. For is it not Beauty that has the potential to break through fears that separate us -- one from another, nation from nation? Like love, beauty is universal. Bask in beauty! Radiate beauty! Live in beauty! Support Beauty!
Viola Petitt Neal
Fragments of Experience
I have been lost and drowned
In beauty's deeps
Forgetting,
Beauty is but the garment
Thou dost wear;
And when the eventide has come
Thou has departed,
Leaving Thy garment,
But I seek Thyself.
John P. McNamee
Diary of a City Priest
Music is like a human echo of the beauty of the world or nature or flowers somewhere out there sounding the beauty of a Creator... As I listen to this beauty, I can rest, let down the guard I consciously or unconsciously maintain against the next minor or major difficulty or crisis.
Matthew FGox
Soul Creation
Looking for and enjoying beauty is a way to nourish the soul. The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere, ready to nourish the soul. It must only be seen to begin helping us.
Diane Mariechild
Open Mind
A favorite Lily Tomlin character is Trudy, the bag lady. Trudy suggests that we practice "awe-robics", by taking time each day to appreciate something such as the beauty of the stars. Trudy says we're closest to understanding when we are in awe of what we don't understand. May our hearts open to a love that is awesome.
A. M. Lindbergh
Gift from the Sea
Beauty itself bears witness to God.
Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant -- and therefore beautiful. A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of the sky. A note in music gains significance from silence on either side. A candle flowers in the space of night.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Life of the Beloved
How can I search for beauty and truth unless that beauty and truth are already known to me in the depth of my heart? It seems that all us human beings have deep inner memories of the paradise that we have lost. We were innocent before we started feeling guilty; we were in the light before we entered into the darkness; we were at home before we started to search for a home. Deep in the recesses of our minds and hearts there lies hidden the treasure we seek. We know its preciousness and we know that it holds the gift we most desire: a life stronger than death.
Amado Peno
With that from the earth,
beauty I will create --
With that beauty,
my soul I will give.
Louis Roberts
The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Ur Von Balthasar
Aesthetics is concerned with form, shape, composition, expression, and seeing forms AS THEY ARE. Just as the artist is "inspired" and filled with enthusiasm, so too those who SEE are seized with the divine spirit. What is seen is the doxa (glory) of the form, but this glory is the glory of being. Balthasar argues that the mystery in such beauty is the interruption of the eternal into the material in such a way that one can speak of the event of beauty, the entrance of the numinous into this world. To see beauty is to be overcome by the glory that breaks out of this person, this poem, this picture, this flower... We are confronted by the sense of its Otherness.
Jean Shinoda Bolen
Handbook for the Soul
Appreciation of beauty is access to the soul. With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes. To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul. Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!" the soul is present.
Desmond Tutu
We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose bedecked with dew... Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful ... and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
Jami
Beauty and love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
Paula D'Arcy
Gift of the Red Bird
What do I have to give You, God? A flock of gulls flies overhead. They are so beautiful, their black wings against the morning's blue sky. Last night I watched the same sky, covered with stars. I feel the ocean water which laps at my toe. I walk among the rocks, picking up quartz and crystal. What do I have to give You?
I close my eyes and listen. You say to me, "Love the beauty of my creation." I wait. There must be more. But there is no more. And I am left hearing the words again. Love the beauty of my creation.
Christopher Banford
In beauty, the soul recognizes its higher self and seeks to become one with it.
Alice O. Howell
Reflections on the Ego/Self Axis
There are paintings and sculptures that tug at the heart because they catch a simple moment and make beauty conscious. There is music that "brims the eyes with bliss". Such works of art are shock waves that travel between the ego and the Divine Guest, reminding us of a nobler purpose to life. They create moments in which we know that we can lead a symbolic life, when the Self, like Michelangelo's God, reaches out to touch the outstretched hand of our inner Adam and our ego.
July/August 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 7)
EVERY BLESSING, friends! May the love you are and share with others ever increase that beauty might flourish. For it is not Beauty that has the potential to break through fears that separate us -- one from another, nation from nation? Like love, beauty is universal. Bask in beauty! Radiate beauty! Live in beauty! Support beauty!
June 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 6)
SUMMER BLESSINGS, dear friends! May we pause long enough each day to move from the sounds and birdsong into the depth soundings of our own soul songs and through to the sound of Silence.
Anonymous
The entire world is a musical instrument, the pole of the world celestial is intersected where this heavenly chord is divided by the spiritual sun. Earthly music is an echo of this cosmic harmony: it is a relic of heaven.
Dorothy Fielding
Descent into Light
Do not shun the darkness of the night. Learn to love it, learn to feel it. For in the darkness of night you will hear the silent music, music that runs through all eternity, and through us, as though we were not there. It is the harmony, the rhythm of all things. It is preludes, fandangos, great symphonies of joy, all things that are in harmony. One of the strongest of all is our heartbeat, which keeps us upon this earth, and the prayers throughout the world. So in your darkness, listen quietly, for it comes at such times: the silent music of the night ... the silent music of life.
Joa Bolendas, Therese Schroeder-Sheker
So That You May Be One
The gift of love is nothing short of a miracle, and the same is true for the experience of the singer who works with prayer: sung prayer is one of the many ways in which love is made audible and brought into the fullness of life... In sung prayer, one must risk burning and one must risk soaring, nothing less. Whether one falls in love or whether one sings in love, surrender is to be and to radiate love. In the case of the musician, this is done through the medium of music. In the case of the truly musical person, this can even be achieved through a silence which radiates interior harmony and, by extension, brings peace to those surrounding them.
David Spangler
My soul sings, Beloved, You are the melody.
You are the strings on which I play.
You are the One for whom I sing.
You are all that is and my soul seeks Oneness with You.
Teach me the music of life, Beloved.
Teach me to play the instrument of my Being,
and of this world, that I might see and hear
and know more clearly the nearness of your Presence.
I would sing into the Oneness that You are.
Ken Carey
Terra Christa
Listen for the divine music called the silence of the Spirit.
Within us, around us, the music of the spheres unfolds in rhythms celestial and melodies terrestrial... In the beginning was the creative sound, symphony, harmony and melody, every pattern and structure ever to be. The Word that was with God has not ceased to be; this very moment, it holds suspended within its vibratory magnificence, every atom, molecule, cell and organism. It sings the very earth into being. The sun, moon and planets share in a symphony of the heavens that includes every comet, asteroid and star-system in our galaxy -- and in a billion others.
Each individual who restores trust in God sounds a note in harmonic resonance with the entire cosmos. This magnifies the vibrations of the Holy Place.
Paul Marechal
Dancing Madly Backwards
Last night, after praying Compline in the darkness, the final verse of the last Psalm began to move around inside me, like the Spanish canto hondo -- deep song. I found myself cooperating with this music, leaning into it, knowing that when its last note vanished into the silence, another leaf would be living in the tree I call "myself".
Victor Hugo
Be like that bird
Who, pausing in flight,
Feels the bough give way
Beneath her feet
And yet sings
Knowing she hath wings.
Brewster Ghiselin
The Creative Process
Music reproduces for us the intimate essence, the temp and energy, of our spiritual being; our tranquility and our restlessness, our animation and our discouragement, our vitality and our weakness -- all, in fact, of the fine shades of dynamic variation of our inner life.
Aivanhov Omraam Mikhael
Creation: Artistic and Spiritual
Music is the breathing of our soul and consciousness. It is through music that the soul manifests itself in the world. When our higher consciousness is awakened, when we develop our capacity to perceive the subtler realities, we will begin to hear the great and glorious symphony that reverberates throughout space from one end of the universe to the other, and we will comprehend the deepest meaning of life.
David Steindl-Rast
The Music of Silence
Music is not merely a rhythmic arrangement of notes, but derives its life from the matrix of silence out of which it arises and into which it flows. And it is the silence between the notes that gives them meaning and grace.
Orpingalik
How many songs I have I cannot tell you. I keep no count of such things. There are so many occasions in one's life when a joy or a sorrow is felt in such a way that the desire comes to sing; and so I only know that I have many songs. All my being is song, and I sing as I draw breath... It is just as necessary for me to sing as it is to breathe.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either ... curved point, -- what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher,
The angels would press upon us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence.
May 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 5)
BLESSINGS, dear friends. As the flowers begin to bloom, 'tis a good time to pause in the Silent Sacred Space of our own heart soil to celebrate all that wants to flower in us.
John Albert
Portraits in Rhyme
Your arched aisles wooed me near, a place of peaceful rest amidst my struggles.
Nan Merrill
Wherever you live is your Sacred Chapel if you treat is as the abode of the Beloved.
Gunilla Norris
I want to remind myself and others that our homes can become sacred places, filled with life and meaning.
Joseph Campbell
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
Jan Phillips
Marry Your Muse
Sacred space is the playground of the soul. To create a sacred space, we start from nothing. We define its parameters, clear it of accoutrements, and bless the emptiness. Then we bring to the space only that which leads us into harmony with our own center, fortifies us, reflects our intention, reminds us of the reason we are there. Our sacred space is defined in such a way that everything in it becomes a metaphor for the journey out of the secular realm and into the spiritual, when we disengage from the limits of time and temporal concerns.
M. Scott Peck
In Search of Stones
Certain redwood groves are holy places for me because they capture silence and light. The forest is so dense as to exclude all external noise. It is possible to ignore their silence until a single bird sings within. When the single song has died not only do I realize I have heard a sound exquisite in its simplicity, but also that I have heard it so precisely because it was embedded in pure silence.
Barbara Erakko Taylor
Silence
One day I stood quietly gazing through our sliding glass doors... It was a windless day and without thinking, I found myself slipping into a silent world. Then, something overcame me. Whereas silence had been a visitor, a friend with whom I communed when I chose, now silence slipped into the core of my being. Without my knowing, without even my conscious consent, silence entered me.
John O'Donohue
Anam Cara
The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality. Its surface texture of grass and stone is blessed by rain, wind, and light. With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving itself unreservedly. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth's joy and despair. The earth is full of soul.
Vijali
Earthwalking Sky Dancers
Even as a child I knew the sacredness of personal space. I remember going behind my grandmother's house to a place where I could hide behind tall weeds. I would sit for hours in my circle of stones. That space was so special I never revealed it to even my closest playmates... Sacred spaces can be created anywhere. When I felt a need for a sacred simplicity within my city home, on a sudden inspiration, I emptied a closet and painted it white. Within this purified space, I placed a stone, a leaf, a bowl of water and a sitting cloth from the Amazon -- things special to me at that moment. I had created my own sacred space.
Robert J. Wicks
Touching the Holy
When we sit prayerfully in silence and solitude we are entering the desert, our desert. In this sacred space, the goal is not to hide from others, devoid of pain, or to hold ourselves apart from and above the community in which we live. It is to receive the grace to learn to face ourselves directly so we can learn to live ordinariness, to live ethically and generously with others.
Nan Merrill
Let us enter into silence, that the Holy Mystery might take possession of us.
Garret Keizer
A Dresser of Sycamore Trees
This room was a sacred space, a place that he had chosen to make especially his own, a place redeemed from mere "use" in which he would make a conscious attempt to be at rest and to put a part of his life in order. In short, this was the evidence that the man was able to pray.
Leila Castle
A sacred space is a place where you feel comfortable and protected. You are free from outside influences to meditate, pray, or just sit quietly and be.
Eryk Hanut, Andrew Harvey
Mary's Vineyard
Bede Griffiths once said to me,
"What is essential is to keep the heart always open to beauty."
What could be harder in an age like ours? And yet, it is just because our age is so harsh and brutal that it is more than ever essential to create around us, in our homes and offices and meeting places, a sacred environment. To do so is to awaken the poet in each of us, the poet and the lover of life and beauty. Creating a sacred environment is not complicated; it just requires concentration and the constant reminder that the one important thing in your life is to keep your heart open to Divine Love.
John Hofield, June Singer
Seeing Through the Visible World
I looked at the gentle blue-eyed Englishman and asked him how he managed to meditate and concentrate in such a noisy, busy place.
"It's not difficult," he replied. "I simply incorporate the sounds into my meditation. It becomes a kind of rhythm. It doesn't disturb my peace and quiet at all."
I recognized that the quiet place, the sacred place, has to be within the person first of all.
Nancy and John Todd
From Eco-cities to Living Machines
Should a greater ecological awareness begin to shape our thinking, new symbols would arise that could bind the scientific and the spiritual and would reinfuse all life with the essence of the sacred. We would be increasingly capable of envisioning the "blue, true dream" that is the living Earth luminous in the darkness of the surrounding sky.
Let us enter into silence
Let us enter into silence, that the Holy Mystery might take possession of us.
Wherever you live is your Sacred Chapel
Wherever you live is your Sacred Chapel if you treat is as the abode of the Beloved.