Dear Friends ~ Each day after morning kindergarten my mom sent me harrumphing to my childhood bedroom for a nap. The sun would shine through the tree outside my window, casting shadows on the peach hearts wallpapered around the room. Begrudgingly at first, I settled into the quiet space, but eventually the shimmying branches lulled me into stillness.
Above my dresser hung an embroidery piece—yellowed with age, and cross-stitched with pastel, looping letters like the ones in the old family Bible my mom kept in a box. I didn't know how to read very well, and the scrolling font made it a special challenge to puzzle out the stitched message. For many months I contemplated and daydreamed about what it might say, until the mysterious cipher revealed itself: a prayer for a resting child. "Now I lay me down to sleep..."
As an adult, I no longer resist quiet times. In fact, I long for solitude and space to counteract unending to-do lists; to balance out the type of hyper-productivity that dulls the senses. At times contemplation looks more like daydreaming: a quiet mind making room for the imagination to bring clarity and illumination. In silence, the jumbled-up pieces of life slowly take shape before our eyes and offer meaning we can carry with us.
Over the coming month, one season will shift into the next. May we all leave space to rest, daydream, and marvel at the newness as it unfolds. ~ Joy
If we would return to God, and find ourselves in God, we must reverse Adam and Eve's journey, we must go back by the way they came. The path lies through the center of our own soul. Adam and Eve withdrew into themselves from God and then passed through themselves and went forth into creation. We must withdraw ourselves from exterior things, and pass through the center of our souls to find God. We must recover possession of our true selves by liberation from anxiety and fear and inordinate desire.