Nan Merrill

February 1994 (Vol. VII, No. 2)

BLESSINGS BE WITH YOU, dear friends! And may all your visions be of and through Love ...

Let us not be led into the world of attraction

Reshad Feild Reason Is Powerless in the Expression of Love

Let us not be led into the world of attraction. "Falling in love" means coming into Love, coming into Being, and then falling into this world. We cannot come to Love through attraction, the temptation that is with us each moment of our lives. Yet if we come into Love, then we see the whole world as a world of Beauty. The purpose of Love is Beauty. Lead us not into forgetfulness of the object of our search. Let us not be led astray by the unleashed forces of attraction. Is not the object of our search Thyself? Is not the cause of all creation Love itself? And, is not Thy yearning greater than ours can ever be for Thee?

The binding energy of the universe

Unknown
LOVE is the binding energy of the universe ...

We must make certain that our path is connected with our heart

Jack Kornfield A Path With Heart

In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: WE MUST MAKE CERTAIN THAT OUR PATH IS CONNECTED WITH OUR HEART... Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts... When we ask, "Am I following a path with heart?" we discover that no one can define for us exactly what our path should be. Instead, we must allow the mystery and beauty of this question to resonate within our being. Then somewhere within us an answer will come and understanding will arise. If we are still and listen deeply, even for a moment, we will know if we are following a path with heart.

The nature of God Is to love and be loved

Haven Trevino The Tao of Healing

Quiet the mind
Be still
And watch the breath of God
Rise and fall
In all things.
Allow God's breath
To be your breath;
Allow God's nature
To be your nature.

The nature of God
Is to love and be loved;
Your desire to love creates intention,
Intention focuses attention,
Attention illuminates understanding,
Understanding manifests forgiveness,
Forgiveness is the fountainhead of Love.

Intend to be Love
And know death for what it is:
The inbreath of God.

I only know I walk like someone Beheld beloved and known

Sophia de Mello Breyner

I'm listening yet I don't know
If what I hear is silence
Or God.

I'm listening but I can't tell
If I hear the plain of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness that
At the bounds of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.

I only know I walk like someone
Beheld beloved and known
And because of this I put into my every movement
Solemnity and risk.

Most people resist being loved

Beatrice Bruteau Radical Optimism

It is true, though strange to say, that most people resist being loved. But God is persistent. God is patient and does not give up. God leaves ninety-nine sheep in the fold and goes after the one that is lost until he finds it and brings it back. God sweeps the house clean and searches for the lost coin until she finds it. People who have been hurt are very distrustful; they cannot easily believe that someone loves them unconditionally... All this comes of not understanding the nature of unconditional, creative love, that it is addressed to the true self which transcends all the descriptions... God never gives up, but pursues people forever, hoping to convince them that they are unconditionally loved. This is GOD'S "radical optimism!"

Vision, like love, takes no planning, for it just happens

Tom Brown, Jr. The Quest

I remembered what Grandfather had once said to me,

Vision, like love, takes no planning, for it just happens. It is directed by the Creator and made manifest by creation. Take no care as to how you will live your Vision or how you will find your love. For the Creator has planned all these things, and the way will become clear to your heart. You have been given a choice, but if you listen to your heart, there needs to be no choice. Your path is your heart, and all that you need do is follow it. I have found that the grave mistakes that take place in life are made when a person does not follow their heart. When the heart is ignored, life becomes complicated and distorted, but when the heart is followed, we touch the Creator. Logic and reason are poor alternatives to a life full of love and Vision.

Be swift to love

Henry W. Longfellow

Oh, be swift to love,
Make haste to be kind,
do not delay.
The golden moments fly!

Love transforms

Mechtild of Magdeburg

Love transforms.
Love makes empty hearts overflow.
This happens even more
when we have to struggle through
without assistance,
all unready
for the play
of Love.

When a mind is awakened to the truth of its identity, Its creative enactment is always loving

Marc Hammer The Jeshua Letters

When a mind is awakened to the truth of its identity,
Its creative enactment is always loving.
Its creations image what Love is, providing an opportunity
for minds inhering in the bondage of illusion
To witness the image of what alone is Real.
When Love made visible is witnessed,
it can be recognized, and a movement toward
enlightenment is made without effort...
All minds are channels of Love, to the degree that they
choose to be Awake.
The minds of humankind are intoxicated with love.
They long for love because the Truth of who they are,
and what alone is Real, is necessarily within them.

January 1994 (Vol. VII, No. 1)

Greetings and blessings, friends! May PEACE BE WITH YOU in this season of quiet dormancy, this season of awaiting new growth in a new year. For, as we:

No wider than the heart is wide

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The world stands out on either side.
No wider than the heart is wide.
Above the earth is stretched the sky
No higher than the soul is high.

In secret, silent, still

C.R. Das

Quiet the trees; quiet the creepers all.
In the sky's tranquil lap burns the sun's ray.
In my heart's temple doth the silence fall,
Worshipping Thee, Thou, Silent Majestic. Thou
Replenishest this tranquil heart. O Thou
Eternal, Absolute, with silence fill
Me and with song, in secret, silent, still.

Without silence

Evelyn Underhill
Without silence, the inward stillness in which God educates and molds us is impossible!

Silence is where we learn to listen

Joan Halifax The Fruitful Darkness

Silence is where we learn to listen, where we learn to see. Holding silence, being held by stillness, people go alone to the wilderness "to stop and see", to renew their vision, to enter the mind ground, to hear the truth, to return to the knowledge of the extensiveness of self and the truth of no self. One seeks solitude to know relatedness. There the unknown, the unarticulated, the unpredictable, the uncontrollable appear as protectors of the present.

Where sacred silence sings

Richard Bachtold

Winter mysteries whispered into invisible doorways
to holy blackness,
They silently fled over white landscapes
Like a dancing child cloud drifting with music.

Poetry awakened while snowflakes played in the
fearful twilight,
White notes striking the deepening silence graced all,
Yet dead ears forgot the path to song.

Now, light and dark embrace in our homeland
Where sacred silence sings ...

The firefly flickers of God's grace are enough to embrace the unknown

Joyce Rupp May I have this dance?

The firefly flickers of God's grace are enough to embrace the unknown. A surge of powerful surrender takes over all my looking back, and ever so gently and hopefully I risk the road of another new year.

Keeping myself ready to hear the voice when it comes out of silence

Paul Griffiths A Paul Griffiths Reader

One morning, as a fire flamed back of a handsome eighteenth-century glass screen, I looked for the silence underneath the explosions of the fire... By now I was adept at finding the silence wherever it was. As I settled into it this morning, letting it fill my ears, mind and being, I heard the words: "I'll never abandon you, no matter what you do." ... Once I heard it, I learned to go and find, first the silence and then to wait for the voice. It comes OUT of the silence. It doesn't always come. But somehow I know it will again. And this knowledge has changed my existence. What I have to do, I now understand, is keep myself ready to hear it when it does.

I surround myself with silence

Alice Koller The Stations of Solitude

I surround myself with silence. The silence is within me, permeates my house, reaches beyond the surfaces of the outer walls and into the bordering woods. It is one silence, continuous from within me, outward in all directions: above, beneath, forward, rearward, sideward. In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe. I require this silence. I search it out. The finely drawn treble song of a white-throated sparrow is part of it. Invasions of it by the noise of engines are a torment to me. This is my solitude.

As I befriend the silent darkness within me

Vincent M. Bilotta Studies in Formative Spirituality

As I experience God as the source of my life, a longing wells up within me, a longing to grow older together with the living fountain of my life. Upon entering into myself, I find God. By coming to discover my original self, I come to God. As I befriend the silent darkness within me, I become more open to the hidden and mysterious dimension of myself. There, as I rest in the darkness, I uncover myself as a gift from God. I need to take up that gift and walk gently and compassionately with the sacredness that I am...I need to care for the precious gift that I am, preserve it, and hallow the ground from which it springs.

Learn how to wait,

Daniel J. O'Leary Year of the Heart

Learn how to wait, how to be silent, how to befriend the dark ... thus, do we prepare to be creative. There is a waiting, a silence and a darkness in all birthing. Heart's winter is already a filling womb... For the font of inspiration and newness to keep welling up within us, old wounds and our shadow side must be encountered and owned. So that creative love may flow in and out, each heart, one day, must be broken.

The chasm between being alone and loneliness is deep

Tom Brown, Jr. Grandfather

The chasm between being alone and loneliness is deep. The way you begin to be alone and at peace without being lonely is to know that you are with your best friend. When you are at peace with yourself and love yourself, you can never be lonely. Only when you learn to love yourself, can you love another. You must find that love for yourself before you can touch the purity of aloneness. Love of self, without being selfish, will not allow loneliness to exist. Love of self also creates a love for everything else and brings us closer to the Sacred Oneness.

December 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 11)

BLESSINGS and ALL GOOD WISHES, dear friends! May each one of us radiate from the silence the gifts of wisdom, love, goodness, light and joy. May we recognize that in this, the busiest and noisiest of seasons, we are invited to ever deepening times of silence and solitude to ponder the Mystery of Love born anew in our hearts.

Hide in the human heart

Chinese Proverb

It was said that God once sought advice from a Master. "I want to play a game of hide-and-seek with humankind. I've asked the angels what the best place would be. Some said in the depth of the ocean. Others said the top of the highest mountain. Still others, the far side of the moon or a distant star. What do you suggest?"

Said the Master, "Hide in the human heart. That's the last place they will think of!"

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth

Chandogya

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our hearts.

How, then, was Love manifested to the world?

James Kirsch The Reluctant Prophet

How, then, was Love manifested to the world? A star shone in heaven beyond the stars, and its light was unspeakable, and its newness caused astonishment, and all the other stars, with the sun and moon, gathered in chorus round this star.

Open your hearts, oh woman and man!

Jean J. Andersen Encounters at Bethlehem

Open your hearts, oh woman and man!
Now let your great and wise and powerful be as the poor
and foolish little ones:

unembarrassed to receive the incredible Gift,
and not knotted in guilt over your lack of worth,
and not struggling to "earn" what cannot be deserved,
but just simply, joyfully accepting of all
that is given so humbly and gladly in Love.

Blessed are the men and women who are planted on your earth

Song of Solomon

Blessed are the men and women
who are planted on your earth,
in your garden,
who grow as your trees and flowers grow,
who transform their darkness to light.

Their roots plunge into darkness;
their faces turn toward the light.

Deep in the darkness of a silent night

Doris Klein

Deep in the darkness of a silent night and quietly in the secret of your soul, the Mystery of God continues to be born.

The encounter with God, the experience of the absolute

Hugo Enomuja-Lasalle Living in the New Consciousness

The encounter with God, the experience of the absolute, is a principle at work in ourselves... This awakening to the brightness of the inner light is a necessary step in the full spiritual development of the person, of EVERY person, a step in which the transcendental sense awakens, the inner eye opens, and reality is finally encountered. It is a breaking forth from the constricting shell of ego-consciousness, an opening to the breadth and fullness of life found in cosmic consciousness.

With True Love, there is always a childlike sense of wonder

Gerald G. Jampolsky Out of Darkness into the Light

With True Love, there is always a childlike sense of wonder and an appreciation for the Mystery of life that is beyond our human comprehension.

The restless hollowness which surfaces into our consciousness when we reflect in silence

Karl Rahner

The restless hollowness which surfaces into our consciousness when we reflect in silence is already the nearness of God, who is like the pure light which, spread over everything, hides itself by making everything else visible in the silent lowliness of its being. The Incarnation urges us, in the experience of solitude, to trust the nearness -- it is not emptiness; to let go and then we will find; to give up and then we will be rich.

O hidden Life, vibrant in every atom

Besant

O hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
O hidden Light, shining in every creature.
O hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with Thee,
Know they are therefore one with every other.

In the eternal birth that occurs in the core and innermost regions of the soul

Meister Eckhart

In the eternal birth that occurs in the core and innermost regions of the soul, God covers the soul with light, whereby the light grows so great in the core of our being, that it overflows into the faculties of the soul and into the outer person.

The person who sits is more ready to bring forth clear things

Meister Eckhart

The person who sits is more ready to bring forth clear things than someone who walks or stands. Sitting means peace. Thus we sit, which is bowing in humility among all creatures. Then the individual comes to a quiet peace reaching this peace in light. The light is given in the silence wherein one sits and dwells.

From the heart of me that is the Heart of God

David Spangler

From the heart of me that is the Heart of God
Love streams forth to all my worlds,
And I am One.

From the Light we share within the Mind of God
Love streams forth to all our worlds,
And we are One.

From the All in all that is the Life of God
Love streams forth -- God's plan made real --
And all are one.

With God as our Beloved,
We are the Plan on earth.

If in your heart you make a manger for Love's birth

Angelus Silesius

If in your heart you make
a manger for Love's birth,
Then God will once again
become a child on earth.

November 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 10)

GREETINGS, friends ... May the blessings of inner peace, quiet joy, wonder and gratitude abound in each of your lives! And let us pray that these blessings radiate out to wherever they are most needed.

The story of a saint is always a love story

Kenneth L. Woodward Making Saints

The story of a saint is always a love story. It is a story of a God who loves, and of the beloved who learns how to reciprocate and share that "harsh and dreadful love". It is a story that includes misunderstanding, deception, betrayal, concealment, reversal, and revelation of character. It is, if the saints are to be trusted, our story. But to be a saint is not to be a solitary lover. It is to enter into deeper community with everyone and everything that exists.

All we have

Haven Trevino Tao of Healing

All we have
All we are
From All That Is,
A gift.

One without wonder
Will not see It
While the eyes of the grateful
Will reflect It.

To pray is to regain a sense of the Mystery that animates all beings

Abraham Heschel I Asked for Wonder

To pray is to regain a sense of the Mystery that animates all beings. The Divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the Mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present to the constant unfolding of time amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers, wiser than all alphabets ... clouds that die constantly for the sake of God's glory. We are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of all our clashes and complaint in the face of the tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to live. How strange we are in the world and how presumptuous our doings. Only one response can maintain us: GRATEFULNESS for witnessing the wonder; for the gift to our unearned right to live ... to adore ... to fulfill. It is GRATEFULNESS which makes the soul great.

As we slow down we come to realize that we are persons called in time and space

Thomas A. Kane Happy Are You Who Affirm

As we slow down we come to realize that we are persons called in time and space TO BE freely and fully human and that therein is our sanctity. We see that an individual life is a GIFT entrusted to us freely and generously by God. When I struggle to live a life of affirmation, I must ultimately let go of trying to control all the variables of existence and surrender in faith to the freeing power of the providential plan. This only happens when I emphasize in my day-to-day life the time and place TO BE alone, TO BE with friends, TO BE with other workers and TO BE with God.

You will hardly believe your ear

Thomas More Bible Prayer Book

You will hardly believe your ear, since,
as You know, I like to divide my time equally
between feeling sorry for myself,
and asking You to make things better for me.

But just this once, I'd like to thank You for
all those things, beginning with the gift
of life itself, You have showered on me for
no earthly reason that I can see,
except that inexplicably in the face of
selfishness and ingratitude of monumental
proportions and endurance,
You love me.

The essence of prayer

Nan Merrill
The essence of prayer is thanksgiving.

Benediction is a formative experience

Susan A. Muto Celebrating the Single Life

Benediction is a formative experience, whether we bless others or receive a blessing from them. It comes in the form of an inner or outer word or gesture arising from a loving heart. In blessing we express gratitude to God for the divine inherent in other persons. We ask God in effect to bring this form to its fullness.

Gratitude begets gratitude

Henri J.M. Nouwen Becoming the Beloved

GRATITUDE is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an "accident", but a divine choice. It is important to realize how often we have had chances to be grateful and have not used them. When someone is kind to us, when an event turns out well, when a problem is solved, a relationship restored, a wound healed, these are very concrete reasons to offer thanks... When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant. What fascinates me so much is that every time we decide to be grateful, it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love.

Practice random kindness

Anne Herbert
Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty ...

Appreciation is a natural gift

Tilden Edwards Living in the Presence

Appreciation is a natural gift. It is meant to lead us to God ... Appreciation naturally appears the moment our self-concern is relinquished. It cannot be possessed and it cannot be earned; it simply IS, a free gift, available everywhere. Life is known then more as art than task. The greatest task becomes our work to help others realize such wonder. The wonder is so great that we are in danger of overfascination. We easily become focused on the gifts as an end in themselves; they do not always lead us to the Giver. We subtly become attached to the felt beauty and miss not only the initial invitation to thanksgiving, but the yet deeper invitation: to release ourselves to God as we are enabled and let rise that full quality of awareness that is beyond felt beauty, beyond self-reflective appreciation.

Take, O take, has now become my cry

Rabindranath Tagore

Time after I came to your gate with raised hands asking for more yet more. You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess. I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and hoard of gifts grew immense, hiding You, and the ceaseless expectations wore my heart out.

Take, O take, has now become my cry. Shatter all from the beggar's bowl. Put out this lamp of the importunate watcher; hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.

Gratitude is a memory of the heart

Cerita

GRATITUDE is a memory of the heart. Whatever goodness the heart receives, the heart never forgets.

October 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 9)

GREETINGS and BLESSINGS be yours, friends! As leave fall to the earth and surrender to the soil, may we, too, move our attention from the outer world to the Inner Being. As we move toward a season of stillness, may our path be straight, returning to the Source. Listen. The stillness calls to you.

What is the source of thought?

Robert W. Genthner

What is the source of thought? Such a demanding question, the mind wants to go to sleep. It requires an enormous and penetrating effort. What is the source of meaning? There is a silence that does not have to be conjured, doesn't require attainment. Nothing you can do to bring it about. It's there constantly. It is the source of everything. Look into silence for a moment. You can touch this silence with your belly. You can touch this silence with your whole being. There is no more fear. Silence is the meaning. Listen to the chatter of your brain. Only echoes. Look deeply into the valley from which those echoes resonate. Listen to the valley itself, the silence. It is here that true function is revealed.

Spiritual growth occurs only when insight encourages both our hears and minds to give up

Robert J. Wicks Reflections

Spiritual growth occurs only when insight encourages both our hears and minds to give up the "advantages" of staying the same for something greater yet unknown.

How to avoid daydreaming

Shundo Aoyama

People often ask how they can avoid daydreaming when they are trying to meditate. Meditation does not make them daydream, but only makes them more aware of fantasies they have always had. In meditating even for a short time, they hold a mirror up to themselves that clearly reveals the shape of their fantasies.

Walking deep in a forest in late autumn, you may be startled by the loud rustling of your feet among the dry leaves breaking in the stillness. Fantasies disturb meditation in the same way.

Whenever I experience God playing in my heart, I feel excitement and wonder

George Merrill

Whenever I experience God playing in my heart, I feel excitement and wonder. I am never really clear what has happened except that I begin to see old things in new ways. The whole of the experience seems more than the sum of its parts and the more I ponder the experience, the more I discover in it.

Attuning our awareness to the way we function

David Cooper Silence, Simplicity and Solitude

Attuning our awareness to the way we function and our relationship to the universe is the primary aim of most spiritual practice. Many teachings point out that our main enemy is ignorance. Awareness is our only defense against ignorance. This is why the practice of silence in spiritual retreat is so beneficial -- it raises and expands our awareness... A spiritual retreat is medicine for soul starvation. Through silence, solitary practice, and simple living, we begin to fill the empty reservoir. This lifts the veils, dissolves the masks, and creates space within for the feelings of forgiveness, compassion, and loving kindness that are so often blocked.

Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening

Henri Nouwen Becoming the Beloved

Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? ... It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of the world and to discover the small intimate voice saying: "You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests." Still, if we dare embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know the voice ... a voice that can be heard by the ear of faith, the ear of the inner heart.

Unless you aren't there

Angelus Silesius

God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
Can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there.

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest

Li Po

You ask why I make my home in the
mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.

May I walk more quietly

Anonymous

May I walk more quietly
as I search more deeply
through the thick forest
along the spiritual path.

There is one quality of mind which is the basis and foundation of spiritual discovery

Joseph Goldstein The Experience of Insight

There is one quality of mind which is the basis and foundation of spiritual discovery, and that quality of mind is called bare attention. Bare attention means observing things as they are, without choosing, without comparing, without evaluating, without laying our projections and expectations on what is happening; cultivating instead a choiceless and non-interfering awareness.

Ten thousand flowers in spring

We-men

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

It was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree

Sherry Ruth Anderson, Patricia Hopkins The Feminine Face of God

As strange as it may sound, it was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree. Her spring beauty and summer fruit filled me with delight, but when the days began to grow cool and the leaves turned from darkest green to yellow, I could feel something deep and marvelously intimate begin to take place between us. And as fall turned to winter, this feeling of intimacy grew. With no bees humming among the blossoms, no birds fluttering from limb to limb, no leaves and cherries decorating her branches, my tree seemed to reveal herself to me in her purest form -- in her very essence. And when I embraced her and pressed my ear against her trunk, I could hear the silence that united us. And I knew that was sacred. (Choqosh Auh-Ho-Ho)

Words are unimportant in approaching God

Lorraine Sinkler The Alchemy of Awareness

Words are unimportant in approaching God. Instead let us go to God with the same attitude one child had as she sat almost hidden in the midst of a field of waving wheat. When her grandfather went looking for her, from a distance he heard her going through the entire alphabet, softly saying, "A, B, C, D, E ..." Curious, her grandfather asked, "What are you doing?" "I'm praying, Grandpa. But I don't know the right words, so I'm saying all the letters and letting God put them together."

September 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 8)

May the blessings of inner peace and quiet joy be with each of you as we move toward the autumn season!

Listening to my silence

Celia Wesle

Shapes, dynamics,
sounds, meaning:
at a time.
I have to gestate the experience,
bake it in my mind's oven,
pull away,
avoid stimulus.
I need just to be
and listen to my silence.

Wind in the cave

Unknown
Wind in the cave.
Movement in stillness.
Power in silence.

Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness, --
And inward stillness and an inward healing;
That perfect silence where the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart, that we may know
God's will, and in the silence of our spirits,
That we may do God's will, and do that only!

Silence makes the secretions of the mind visible

Joan Halifax The Fruitful Darkness

Silence makes the secretions of the mind visible. By emptying myself when I fast, emptying myself in solitude, I might discover myself full -- of history, wilderness and society. And I can see my identity co-evolving with all of creation ... I willingly entered the Valley of the Shadow through solitude, silence, stillness, meditation, and prayer. In those quiet places, I discovered a mindstream whose depths were luminous.

I had decided to marry the silent forest

Thomas McDonnell A Thomas Merton Reader

One might say, I had decided to marry the silent forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. So perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center point of all other loves. I attempt to cultivate this plant without comment in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most rare of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross.

A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence,

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence, if the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God, if the voices are, for us, messages and solicitations of God.

A name of God which is not a na

Graham Smith Prayer Words

Dom Henri le Saux, a French Benedictine monk, suggests that the sacred sound "OM" can be used by anyone:

More than any particular name of Divinity, OM conveys the ineffability and the depths of the divine Mystery. It bears no distinct meaning ... It does not even recall any mythological or semi-historic event. It is a kind of inarticulate exclamation uttered when you are confronted with the Presence in yourself and around yourself.

You could say that OM is a name of God which is not a name.

Tilling the fields of silence

Elaine Laforet
One must be still to till the fields of silence.

Stillness

Meister Eckhart

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

We have to earn silence

Pico Iyer

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thoughts allow. In silence, we might better say, we can hear Someone else think ... Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to assert itself.

If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine

Deng Ming-Dao 365 TAO

If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine. But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements, if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, and if we allow ourselves to become turbulent ... 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 with 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.

The name that can be named

Lao-tzu

The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

July-August 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 7)

GREETINGS AND BLESSINGS be with you all!  Summer: may each one of us find plenty of time and space for leisure and recreation.

How rare in our world to sit absolutely still for an hour

May Sarton Recovering

How rare in our world to sit absolutely still for an hour, not thinking, not even feeling, simply being in the presence of great beauty! At first one notices the small things, the subtle changes as wind suddenly ruffles a small space in the water, the amber color of still water over sand, or the reflection of a single tree; but little by little, it is the whole unified scene that takes over. And it is the silence itself that unifies it. One slides down deep deep into contemplation. This is not ecstasy like the light on lavender petals. It is more like prayer. Beauty beyond our understanding and beyond our uniqueness as individuals. Presence that asks nothing of us except to be in its presence. And filled with that presence, we walk back into our separate lives.

A child in the cradle

Vincent Van Gogh

A child in the cradle, if you watch it at leisure, has the infinite in its eyes.

The world really doesn't need more busy people

Don Postema Space for God

The world really doesn't need more busy people, maybe not even more intelligent people. It needs deep people, people who know that they need solitude if they are going to find out who they are:

silence, if their words are to mean anything;
reflection if their actions are to have any significance;
contemplation, if they are to see the world as it really is;
prayer, if they are going to be conscious of God,
if they are to "know God and enjoy God forever". 

The world needs people who want their lives not only to be filled, but to be full and fulfilled ... The world needs people who will allow time for God to recreate them, play with them, touch them as an Artist who is making something beautiful with their lives.

Summer peace

Grace Noll Crowell Summer Fields

Here is peace to store within the breast
Against the days of tumult and despair.
Within this cool green light the heart can rest,
The body strengthens in the clear, clean air,
The soul grows tall,
the viol-string tensions cease
Here in this summer stillness, summer peace.

When I sleep outside to hear the sounds in the night

Meinrad Craighead The Litany of the Great River

When I sleep outside to hear the sounds in the night ...
I hear the moon in her passing light and nightly transitions.
I hear her light falling in the cottonwood leaves and
I hear them spin on their long stems, answering. Regenerating
herself, her excess splendor seeds the earth and
each Tree of Life flowers ...
I hear the light and the seeds falling down and other sounds
rising up from the waters hidden beneath this desert ...
When dawn breaks and I awake to the trees in my eyes,
my ears are ringing with the night silence which sings
in my solitude through the day.

In the midst of silence a hidden word was spoken to me

Meister Eckhart

In the midst of silence a hidden word was spoken to me. Where is this Silence, and where is the place in which this word is spoken? It is in the purest that the soul can produce, in her noblest part, in the ground, even the Being of the Soul.

Leisure is a form of silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality

Josef Piper Leisure, the Basis of Culture

Leisure is a form of silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean "dumbness" or "noiselessness"; it means more nearly that the soul's power to "answer" to the reality of the world is left undisturbed. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation ... When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep ... It is in these silent receptive moments that our souls are sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together.

Where the inner world and the outer world meet

Novalis

The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.

When despair for the world grows in me

Wendell Berry The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I spend my mornings in silence by the lily pond

Marion Woodman Leaving My Father's House

In the summer while at the cottage, I spend my mornings in silence by the lily pond. I slowly become aware of the extreme discipline of stabilizing myself in the void that is full. When I am able to surrender to the silent void, I dissolve into a dance of love. And the beauty, the beauty of the experience, causes me to weep -- to weep in reverence for what it is, for what I am, for what all life is. The beauty of the reality of love existing within all forms of life softens me into a gentleness that cannot force itself into action. Instead I discover a beautiful quality living within me that radiates strength and direction ... By surrendering to the process I find I am living in a state of grace. I start to hear the forms of life around me as sounds, sounds not heard by my ears but known by the silence. I know I can't take this experience into the world, but I can return to this place and refocus in the love that I want to live in the world.

June 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 6)

BLESSINGS, friends! May the bird song of Spring awaken melodies of soul song within your hearts.

The music of the stars

Peter Matthiessen Parabola

Peter Matthiessen in "Earth and Spirit" speaks of reclaiming our harmony with the universe:

As a first step we might consider this Great Mystery that is all about us ... It is the music of the stars, the color of the winds, the dead stillness between tides ... It is no less and no more strange than our life itself.

Hope is hearing the melody of the future

Unknown
Hope is hearing the melody of the future; Faith is dancing to it today!

A perfect pitch of attunement

Reshad Feild Step to Freedom

If we surrender who and what we think we are, we may come to such a perfect pitch of attunement that each note struck within us is an everlasting example of the first note, the first sound, from which all music extends ... J.S. Bach once said, "When the right notes are struck at the right time, the instrument plays itself." We are the instruments of God. We must never forget this if we are to truly be of service ... We are asked to be open, to be aware, to be in love with the Beloved with a passion that defies all reason. The expression of love that shatters the discursive mind is the music of life, if we will only listen, if we will only be receptive and awake.

This tune has truth in it

Kabir

The flute of interior time is played
whether we hear it or not,
What we mean by "love"
is its sound coming in.
When love hits the farthest edge of
excess,
it reaches a wisdom.
And the fragrance of that knowledge!
It penetrates our thick bodies,
it goes through walls-
its network of notes has a structure
as if a million suns were arranged inside.
This tune has truth in it.
Where else have you heard a sound like
this?

The music in the Universe seeks to be expressed

Marlo Morgan Mutant Message Downunder

The people sing individually, in groups and often in harmony. I realized some of the songs were as old as time. These people repeat chants created here in the desert before the invention of the calendar. But I also experienced new compositions, music being composed just because I was there. I was told, "Just as a musician seeks musical expression, so the music in the Universe seeks to be expressed." ... A musician carries the music within.

Music is more than a concord of sweet sounds

Beethoven

Music is more than a concord of sweet sounds, it is something from a higher world which we have power to invoke.

Divinity sings this song to our soul

Sue Woodruff Meditations with Mechtild of Magdeburg

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 in the honey!
O pure dove in your being!
O glorious sun in your setting!
O full moon in your course!

From you,
I you God
will never
turn away.

The parallelism of the psalms is a key to praying them

Kathleen R. Fischer The Inner Rainbow

The parallelism of the psalms is a key to praying them. Just as the rhythm of music invites us to join in a dance, the rhythm of the psalms invites us to join in a dance, the rhythm of the psalms invites us to step into them with our whole self ... Repetition in prayer is a way of holding God in remembrance. The images of such prayer lodge deep within us and surface at other periods of our life. When we move quickly from one idea to another, it is difficult to let any one thought sink in and deepen within us. By quietly reiterating a theme or image, a psalm calms our restless hearts and gently leads us into a prayerful attitude.

Chanting as a prelude to silence

Deng Ming-Dao 365 TAO

In a cave, all outer sounds are smothered by rock and earth, but this makes the sounds of one's own heartbeat and breath audible. In the same way, contemplative stillness turns us away from everyday clamor but allows us to hear the subtle in our own lives. When listening not with the ear but with the spirit, one can perceive the subtle sound. By entering into that sound, we enter into supreme purity. That is why so many religious traditions pray, sing, or chant as a prelude to silence. They understand that the repetition and absorption of sound leads to sacredness itself. The deepest sound is silence. This may seem paradoxical only if we regard silence as an absence of life and its opposites. It is both sound and soundlessness, and it is in this confluence that the power of meditation emerges.

The music of our lives

John Ruskin

Not without design does God write the music of our lives.

I hear the bluebird's song

Edith Wallace A Queen's Quest

Silent and still
my father stands
before our summer shelter

He is thinking a prayer
to the Holy Ones,
asking them
this day
to keep our feet
on the trail of beauty.

Filling the silence
of my father's prayer
I hear the bluebird's song.

Music attracts

Bob Dylan
Music attracts the angels in the universe.

The creative Wisdom of all things has established marvelous and ineffable harmonies

John the Scot

The creative Wisdom of all things has established marvelous and ineffable harmonies by which all things come together in a concord or friendship or peace or love or however else the union of all things is to be designated.

May 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 5)

May, the BLESSINGS OF PEACE be with you, friends!

Developing a deep quality of interest is one of the keys to the whole art of concentration

Jack Kornfield A Path With a Heart

Developing a deep quality of interest is one of the keys to the whole art of concentration. Our steadiness is nourished by the degree of interest with which we focus our meditation ... Concentration combines full interest with a delicacy of attention. This attention should not be confused with being removed or detached. Awareness does not mean separating ourselves from experience; it means allowing it and sensing it fully ... As we learn to steady the quality of our attention, it is accompanied by a deeper and deeper sense of stillness -- poised, exquisite and subtle.

True prayer

Unknown
True prayer often surprises us!

Quiet, contemplative prayer happens

Tilden Edwards Living in the Presence

Quiet, contemplative prayer happens when we are still and open ourselves to the Spirit working secretly in us, when we heed the psalmist's plea: "be still and know that I am God." These are times when we trustingly sink into God's formless hands for cleansing, illumination, and communion. Sometimes spontaneous sounds and words come through us in such prayer, but more often we are in a state of quiet appreciation, simply hollowed out for God. At the gifted depth of this kind of prayer we pass beyond an image of God and beyond any image of self. We are left in a mutual raw presence. Here we realize that God and ourselves quite literally are more than we can imagine.

Spirituality is that quality of being

Bob Samples Mind of Our Mothers

Spirituality is that quality of being that expresses the bonding of all living and non-living things into an evolutionary unity.

God knows the way to us

Patricia Hopkins, Sherry Ruth Anderson The Feminine Face of God

What is it that we do when we come together on alternate Tuesday evenings? The word SILENCE is the key to answering this question. The first time we met we agreed that silence would be the container for our prayers as well as a form of prayer in itself. We sit in a circle on floor cushions with our eyes open or closed ... It makes no difference. What matters is that everything that emerges from this silence -- a word, an image, a line of scripture or poetry, a probing question -- is held by each of us as if it is our collective heart speaking. And it is this heart that we listen to and follow as we pray ... Although we do not always know the way to God, our collective heart reminds us again and again as we sit together in the silence that God knows the way to us.

When the Life, Light and Love are as one within our soul

Tuela

When the Life, Light and Love are as one within our soul, there power, silence, and speechlessness will rest, with the Radiant One in the center.

One night as I was deep in meditation

Kosen Imakita

One night as I was deep in meditation, I suddenly found myself in a very curious state. It was as if I were dead. Everything had been cut away. There was no longer any before and after. Self and object were gone. The only thing I felt was how the inside of my self was totally unified and filled with everything that was over, under and around me ... After a while I came back to myself like one risen from the dead. My seeing, hearing, speaking, my actions and thoughts were completely different from what they had been up to then. As I hesitantly attempted to reflect on the truths of the world and to grasp the meaning of the ungraspable, I understood everything.

Different turns on the same road

Robert J. Wicks

Self-awareness, compassion, and contemplation are different turns on the same road to finding and living the truth.

A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence, if the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God, if the voices are, for us, messages and solicitations of God.

The Universe responds

Alice Walker The Universe Responds

I remember when I used to dismiss the bumper sticker "PRAY FOR PEACE". I realize now that I did not understand it, since I also did not understand prayer, which I now know to be the active affirmation in the physical world of our inseparableness from the divine; and everything, especially the physical world, is divine. War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. Love will overflow every sanctuary given it. Truth will grow where the fertilizer that nourishes it is also truth. Faith will be its own reward ... God answers prayers. Which is another way of saying, the Universe responds ... Only as we have reason to fear what is in our hearts need we fear for the planet. Teach yourself peace. Pass it on.

The silence of meditation is not the silence of a graveyard

Lorraine Sinkler The Alchemy of Awareness

The silence of meditation is not the silence of a graveyard; it is the silence of a garden growing. There is no deadness in a garden, but in that all-pervading silence an intense activity is going on in the ground which will later take form as buds, blossoms and fruit. So, too, in meditation there is not a blankness, but a rhythmic activity of the Spirit. As the mind exhausts itself the Spirit comes through, and we are in the realm of heaven. True, we are still on earth, our feet are solidly on the ground -- the holy ground of spiritual awareness.

I shall fall still

Frederick Franck Book of Angelus Silesius

When challenged to explain the Absolute I shall fall still, I shall be silent as a mute.

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