Ebook Quotes

Walking home, I ponder about a love of art and I think about my love of the land back home, about the healing grace of wildness, and how difficult it is to articulate why conservation matters, why wilderness matters to the health of our souls and how a language of the heart becomes suspect. I wonder how it is we have come to this place where art and nature are spoken in terms of what is optional?

I walked through the birches by the river today. Overwhelming! The earth is stripped down to simple designs. The land has become a visual haiku. Sun on the fretwork of twigs. Blood droplets of rose hips clinging to the bushes. The chatter of the creek against trimmings of ice. The skiff of snow. My breath a white cloud like a departing soul... I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.

A walk in nature can help bring about one of the most essential acts a human being can perform: the stilling of the mind. For when the cacophony of disturbances, reactions, and self-talk subsides, like a windswept sea suddenly finding calm, the lens of our lives becomes a still, pure crystalline window for the cosmos to experience itself through... A walk in the natural world, with conscious mindfulness, can help bathe the senses in the implicate ordering of existence. Such a direct and immediate reminder does much to help steer us back to the center of ourselves.

Prayer is listening to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. It is to constantly go back to the Truth of who we are and claim it for ourselves. I'm not what I do. I'm not what people say about me. I'm not what I have. My life is not rooted in the world, the things the world gives me. My life is rooted in the truth of my spiritual identity. Whatever we do — we have to go back regularly to that place of core identity.

Compassion is an aspect of Divine love that melts all defenses and resistance when anyone's suffering is really seen. There is nothing the personality can do to create compassion, but when we are willing to be completely open and truthful about whatever we are truly feeling, it arises naturally and soothes our hurt. (We could say that truth without compassion is not really truth, and that compassion without truth is not really compassion.) The Divine love that seeks to express itself in the world through us is a powerful force that can break through all of the old barriers and untruths that have accumulated in us.

I sit for a long time in the absolute silence.  All at once, there is barely a perceptible noise, a soft rumble as of thunder.  The sound dies without discovery of its nature or source.  It returns, seeming to come from all directions at once.  At last it emerges from its mystery, grows into a tremulous hum, and solidifies into chanting.  The music has no tempo.  There is no breathing audible in it.  No one voice stands out; it is the fusion of all that produces the effect.  Long held notes which at last modulate again and again in the calm rhythm of the heart.  I am suspended in the sound.  And charged. ... The chanting dies away as gently as it began.  Once again there is the unanimous voice of silence.

Gramma died 25 years after she stopped mothering me.  But she left me something special, and I hear it whenever the need occurs.  A tune wafts in unexpectedly when I am kneading bread or hanging laundry on the line.  The opening phrase of an old  hymn bursts from my mouth:
     "Are ye able," I suddenly sing out.
     "To believe that Spirit triumphs," I can hear Gramma picking up the next line.  The verses poses a great question about faith, but I am thinking about what Gramma gave me.
     "Lillian," I answer, "thank you for my voice."

 

If we do not keep pace with our companions, perhaps it is because we hear a different drummer.  Let us step to the music we hear, however measured or far away.

I'm coming to believe in the importance of silence in music.  The power of silence after a phrase of music, for example: the dramatic silence after the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or the space between the notes of a Miles Davis solo.  There is something very specific about a "rest" in music.  You take your foot off the pedal and pay attention.  I'm wondering as musicians whether the most important thing we do is merely to provide a frame for silence.  I'm wondering if silence itself is perhaps the mystery at the heart of music.  And is silence the most perfect form of music of all?  Songwriting is the only form of meditation I know.  And it is only in silence that the gifts of melody and metaphor are offered.

"That's me singing," Charlie says.  "That's me playing the water drum, too.  If you know my song, you know Charlie.  Everyone has a song.  God gives each a song.  That's how we know who we are.  Our song tells us who we are.

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm.  If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.  If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music.  If we have no rest, God does not bless our work.  If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

When we surround ourselves with sounds of nature, we are soothed and healed, comforted by the songs of our mother, the Earth.  And who is there to sing back to the Earth?

Service is one of the two main levers of evolution: one is meditation, the other is service. Service, of whatever kind, gradually distances you from yourself. As your service grows, expands outwards from yourself, you do not lose touch with yourself but you become less and less concerned with your own ego, your personality expression. Service is the impulse of the soul, the carying out of soul purpose.

Fr. Joe's retort in answser to some enthusiastic piety of mine about the sanctity of community and its high purpose: "Good gracious -- we're not silly old monks mumbling prayers all day. We've got a job to do!" I realized how like him this was, how down-to-earth encapsulating his generous view of the ordinary. Every word he spoke was drawn from a deep well of generosity. He hade built it up over decades of contemplating people and loving them all without reserve. His gentle power spring from a straightforward assessment of the world and his job in it. That job was love.

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life,
life fails to flow through us ...
And if, as we work, we can transmit
life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us
to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life ...
It means kindling the life-quality
where it was not,
Even if it's only in the whiteness
of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task;
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks
as if they were great and noble.

God is the silent Power behind all things,
always ready to pur int our experience that which we need.
God works for us by working through us as us.

Those who would be of great service, remain silent;
they simply pour themselves out in all they do
unreservedly, confidently, peacefully.

There is a sensuality to nature as well as an asceticism; there are teachings on birth and death. Nature is nurturing, education, challenging ... a profound place of presence, of passivity and activity, giving and receiving. Pure contemplation is a direct route to God, and nature can provide an extraordinary context where that graced moment of being Unified can happen.

We create gardens because we are called to be co-creators with the Great Architect, designers of places to fulfill the human quest for wholeness and well-being.... Here in the garden the small voice of God can be heard as we stop to listen.

Old trees hold us to the earth by their deep roots. And trees are our  memories, like the blueprints of our planet's history. When ancient trees are cut, the earth loses its memory.

Our forests, those brave and sheltering Standing People, need their ancient forests, just as we humans need to be firmly rooted to our past generations, the grandparents who hold down our family tree.

The sacred waterfall of tahe Shuar people of Ecuador is breathtaking and beautiful. Yet standing before it, looking up into the rainbow that arches through the cascading waters, the visitor is struck by a feeling that transcends the magnificence of the landscape. No matter what your religion, you cannot help but sense the spirit of this place. Its power defies any attempt to describe the euphoria by a natural phenomenon so overwhelmingly grand that its voice seems to cross all the bridges of time.

The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating. As I watched it sink, I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I though as I sat there, "Be still and know I am God," and knew that without stillness there can be not knowing, we cannot know what spirit means.

When we are in tune, we are conscious of spirit activating us and we welcome this alignment of our own little rhythm with the great rhythm of the Universe. Then we naturally feel refverence for all life and want to care for our Earth home. We desire simplicity. With joy we dance in the ecstasy of attunement. And we are led in the steps of the dance to offer our loving service to the world.

It would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the World, that they were better studied and known in the Creation nof it. For how could humankind find the Confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof?

So many seasons have come and gone and these tall, majestic tress have waited, waited for someone to linger just a moment -- long enough to hear the word they speak, grasp their wonder and beauty, perfect symmetry of trunk and branch -- revealing their essence to the one who has eyes to see and the heart to share a joyful moment with another.

There is a part of the sun in the apple,
Part of the moon in the rose
Part of the flaming Pleiades
In everything that grows.

Out of the vast comes nearness.
for the God of Love, of which we sing,
Has put a little bit of Heaven
In every living thing.

This is true faith: connection to the universe and its inner divine consciousness through freedom, individual uniqueness, regard for one's true personality, grounding of the divine within, all expressed through love. It saves, for it makes us one with that which endures and can never be lost. It gives peace, for it brings the gift of Oneness. We are only upset by that which is outside ourselves and threatens to come in and destroy, or by the reflection of the intruder within. If we truly know we are One with all that is, nothing is outside us, nothing can threaten, so there can only be peace.

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.

May I dance body and mind into You
and be changed.
Embedded in your close Presence
all is holy, all is interconnected, all is One.

I think You, my God, for having in a thousand diffeent ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings You implanted in me as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo; through all these, I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made One.

If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. It doesn't even stop with human beings and enemies of the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. EVERYTHING becomes enchanting with true sight.

One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love.  All we can do is to participate.

What seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. For the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels. It's for us to perceive the warp and woof of the Oneness of All as best we can and learn to follow our own threads through the tapestry of life with authenticity and resolve.

I felt a firm conviction of the unity, the Oneness, of all life, a kinship with all living things, even to the invisible busy atom, a sense that we were made of the same stuff and moved to the same patterns, from the atoms to the universes, the macrocosm repeating the microcosm, that love and truth and goodness in a single life were interpenetrated by the infinite love and truth and goodness we call God.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Become more and more acquainted with your body on all its subtle levels, the fine vibrations which really are music, because when we talk of things created, they are only vibrations, nothing else, energy in movement and matter. In poetic language we can say the world is created by music. As we are the world, the universe, all the music of the universe is in our body.

By now, every thermometer I have has burst at temperatures over 130 degrees. The abbot of the monastery suggested I make a journey up to a cave in the mountains with an elderly monk as guide. We had to walk barefoot as we were walking on holy ground. Under my breath I muttered and grumbled. The monk was well aware of me, and as I began to listen to what he was murmuring, I discovered it was melodic. He was actually singing a song of praise for the wonder and beauty of the day as I was accursing!

How many songs I have I cannot tell you. I keep no count of such things. There are so manyu occasions in one's life when a joy or a sorrow is felt in suich a way tthat 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 a necfessary for me to sing as it is to breath.

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips.
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sun to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow.

We can think of ourselves as musical instruments that imprint the world in a unique way. Our body is the instrument, our nerves are the strings, and the musician is our spirit. When in a music store, if yuou pluck a string on a guitar, all the other guitars in the room will vibrate to that tone. What type of music are you making?

Every soul is born out of silence, dies back into silence and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence allows the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every word. The Unmanifested is present in the world as silence. Thnis is why it has b een said that nothing in this world is so like God as silence.