silence

Solitude brings the clarity of still waters

May you
Learn to be at home with yourself without a hand to hold.
Learn to endure isolation with only starts for friends.

For,

Happiness comes from understanding unity.
Love arrives on the footprints of your fear.
Beauty arrives from ashes of despair.
Solitude brings the clarity of still waters.
Wisdom completes the circle of your dreams.

July-August 1996 (Vol. IX, No. 7)

BLESSINGS be with you all through these summer days, friends! May we each take time in the Silence to value the gifts of one another ... time to nourish our own fragile places; we will, thus, encourage peace in our wounded world.

Love your way into the depths of my being today

Macrina Wiederkehr Song of the Seed

O Loving Being! O Playful Creator! Love your way into the depths of my being today so that whatever I do will be a prayer, whether it be making bread or boiling water, visiting the sick or mowing the grass... May it all be an act of love and a feast of leisure. In all that I do, may I remember that I am a tabernacle of the Holy Mystery, a place where You dwell. May my moments of quiet listening at your feet lead me out again into the marketplace joyfully, gratefully, without complaining.

The beauty in Silence

Nan Merrill
KNOW your own inner peace and the beauty in Silence.
BE that peace and beauty you are.

There is an art to wandering

Cathy Johnson On Becoming Lost

There is an art to wandering. If I have a destination, a plan -- an objective -- I've lost the ability to find serendipity. I've become too focused, too single-minded. I am on a quest, not a ramble. I search for the Holy Grail of particularity and miss the Chalice freely offered, filled full and overflowing.

Go lightly

Frederik Lehrman

Go lightly, simply.
Too much seriousness clouds the soul.
Just go, and follow the flowing moment.
Try not to cling to any experience.
The depths of wonder open of themselves.

Desiring to be still washes away the day's grime

Wendy Beckett Meditations on Silence

Entering into silence is like stepping into cool clear water. The dust and debris are quietly washed away, and we are purified of our triviality. This cleansing takes place whether we are conscious of it or not: the very choice of silence, of desiring to be still, washes away the day's grime.

Learn to be still in the midst of activity

Indira Gandhi

Learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

Solitude brings the clarity of still waters

Nancy Wood Spirit Walker

May you
Learn to be at home with yourself without a hand to hold.
Learn to endure isolation with only starts for friends.

For,

Happiness comes from understanding unity.
Love arrives on the footprints of your fear.
Beauty arrives from ashes of despair.
Solitude brings the clarity of still waters.
Wisdom completes the circle of your dreams.

Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains

Morihei Ueshiba

Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Breath in and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breath out and bring the cosmos back inside. Next, breathe up all the fecundity and vibrancy of the earth. Finally, blend the breath of heaven and the breath of earth with that of your own, becoming the breath of Life itself.

To survive in the world

Andrew Harvey

To survive in the world, you need spiritual strength, you need solitude.

My soul in silence waits

Anonymous
For God alone my soul in silence waits.

The seed begins to germinate in aloneness and in silence

June Singer Seeing Through the Visible World

The work of art that emerges where we leave the place of interiority and reenter the visible world may be something tangible or it may take the form of a special kind of life, a life that is in itself an art. The sharing or the communication, in whatever form that may take, is the essence of the creative act. But the seed begins to germinate in aloneness and in silence.

When there is stillness in the motion of our days

Chinese adage

When there is stillness in the motion of our days, life's mysteries are revealed.

Silence is a very noisy thin

Joan Chittister In a High Spiritual Season

Silence is an intriguing concept. Only silence enables us to hear. But silence is a very noisy thing. When we finally start to listen to our own garbled selves, as well as to others, we discover how full of static our hearts and minds really are. Silence, the time of coming to inner quiet, is the only chance we have of coming to inner quiet, is the only chance we have of coming to serenity.

We cannot expect answers from God after only five minutes of silence

J. Heinrich Arnold Discipleship

We cannot expect answers from God after only five minutes of silence... Meister Eckhart emphasized the importance of the listening heart that listens to God alone ... that God desires nothing more than a heart that detaches itself in silence from everything and turns and listens.

I found I had less and less to say

Soren Kierkegaard

I found I had less and less to say,
until finally, I became silent,
and began to listen.
I discovered in the silence,
the voice of God.

Now I will stop and be wholly attentive

Annie Dillard Teaching a Stone to Talk

At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world: Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening ... you wait, you give your life's length to listening.

The reasons angels can fly

G. K. Chesterton

Perhaps the reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.

The journey to the self is hard work

Djohariah Toor Songs from the Mountain

The journey to the self is hard work, not so much because of its periodic intensity, but because it demands superhuman honesty and a lot of attention... But the unconscious had spoken:

Can you really walk what you talk?
Why are you afraid to live your passion?
Can you live from your heart and not be afraid of who you are?
Can you create out of your flesh rather than your intellect?

Live what you know! There are no obstacles that can't be overcome on this journey!

God is the friend of silence

God is the friend of silence. See how Nature -- trees, flowers, and grass -- grow in stillness; how stars, moon, and sun run their course in silence. The more we receive through quiet prayer, the more we can give in the activity of our daily lives. In essence, it is not what WE say, but what GOD says in us and through us. All our words are useless if they do not come from within.

What a strange power there is in silence

What a strange power there is in silence. How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her.

At the heart of ministry is the Silence

At the heart of ministry is the Silence... Contemplating words or images or imaginings is at least one step removed from the direct experience of God. For as Alan Watts liked to say, "If you find a thousand names for God you will not have God, you will only have a list of names." To contemplate God rather than images about God one can only go humbly, empty of thought and self, into the presence of God -- into the Silence. It is out of the Silence that we love, act, speak if we do so with true spiritual integrity.

Silence is the sea which best bears up our prayers

Silence is the sea which best bears up our prayers. Silence creates possibility -- the possibility of hearing. What we learn to do in silence is to create within ourselves silence, to create within ourselves emptiness, to brush aside all words, all concepts, all feelings, all fantasies, all anxieties, all ambition -- gently to brush away all these things that seem so important -- to let them go and to empty ourselves so that if the word is spoken we may hear it, and if the song is sung, we may attend.

In silence we do not try to be anything or anyone ... we give up trying to be, and simply are -- we become being -- or, to put it another way, we must become nothing in order that we may once again become that which we truly are.

The blessing of presence

Corbett sat there, looking up at me. His tears had dried and his quiet smile said everything words could not. Words? We had come for his gift of words. There was so much we wanted to hear, so much he could tell us. But words were something irrelevant now. A deeper communication was taking place. He had given us the blessing of his presence, and no greater gift can be imagined.

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