summer

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. From this commitment to be focused through the narrow gate of solitude, self-emptying love is outpoured, and the heart of the community, the heart of pain, is transformed into the heart of joy.

In life's trials, little by little we realize that the source of joy does not lie in extraordinary abilities or great expertise, but rather in the humble giving of ourselves in order to understand others with kind-heartedness. Joy is always there lying in waiting for us when simplicity is united to kind-heartedness in our daily lives.

She gives most who gives with joy.

The truly wise have a inner joy that is like a fire; it warms the world.

I charge the sun, the blue of the sky, the light to give you joy every day.

You shall go out with joy
and be led forth with peace.

Joy is a sudden and miraculous grace beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

I support you;
You support me.
I am in the world to offer you peace;
You are in the world to bring me joy.

To meditate is often to move through a land without paths. In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves—There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind's eye much wider... Mindfulness ...means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.

The recovery of faith in our creativity and in the artist within each of us and the artists among all of us is no small thing. It has to do with the rekindling of the spark of hope and vision, of adventure and blessing, that a tired civilization needs... If it is true, as Paul says, that "we are God's work of art," then everything we have said about art as meditation applies to the delight, wonder, admiration, surprise that God takes at our birth and continual unfolding.