There is love like a small lamp, which goes out when the oil is consumed; or like a stream which dries up when it doesn't rain. But there is a love like a mighty spring gushing up out of the earth; it keeps flowing forever, and is inexhaustible . . .
Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.
No separation between God and humans . . . a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. "I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you." . . . There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual interabiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. We flow into God--and Go into us--because it is the nature of love to flow. . . . The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love.
Faith is a gift that comes, the gift of assurance that the powers of light have conquered and will keep on defeating the darkness.Hope is our own attitude of looking steadfastly toward that victory and trying to order our lives toward it.Faith and hope are far easier attitudes to live with than despair and disillusionment . . . so I deliberately choose to hope.Through hope and faith the inner journey has direction and a goal and meditation becomes a process of discovering the reality of Divine Love.
Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there is not one ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possibly come.
We have only begun
to imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
So much is in the bud.
The hope that is left after all your hopes are gone -- that is pure hope, rooted in the heart.
We cannot avoid the question of integrity or wholeness to which all of us proceed. We cannot exclude anyone from the process of becoming fully human, neither a woman nor a man. Personal experience is essential. God gives us the ability to experience ourselves and to assume relationships. As we develop this, we learn to overcome the tensions and the difficulties in life; and those times when there is a lack of love, we are given hope. We experience hope. The great thing about all this is the hope and the realization that it is within our reach.
The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope.
Are we not called to communicate
a mystery of hope
to those around us
by the lives we lead?
The power of love is in hope,
For by it we await the reward of love.
The failing of hope is the disappearance of love.
Hope is a rest from labors in the midst of labors.
Toils depend on it.
Mercy encircles it.
Experiencing the gifts of the Giver of Life engenders hope.
But he who is without experience remains in doubt.
Narrow is the boundary
of "now" and "not-yet"
Deep and dark it stretches
like an ancient passageway
no map has ever marked.
One by one we walk it
step by solitary step.
Not hand in hand,
Not side by side,
But sounding the distance with our tears.
Hope is the chorus sounding, "Come!"
Hope is the embrace, waiting to welcome.
Hope is the companion,
In-Between . . .
Waiting patiently in hope and expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.
Silence is the strength of our interior life . . . if we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.
Hope is the realization of the inner connectedness of all things; of your life and your daily activity with the cosmic scheme of things. The awareness of who you are, that you are the self--that gives you hope. Faith and hope stem from the same inner, intuitive realization of who you are, that you are here for a purpose and that nothing on earth can shake that.
Hope is rooted in emptiness, in poverty, in a waiting that belongs to the pure in heart. Hopeful silence is patient, thirsty, yet withal dynamic, for it desires to become One with God. In this kind of silence of hope lies our strength.
Hope is essential for us. What the breath is to our physical bodies, hope is to our human spirits.
True hope is rooted in a Reality beyond ego and illusion. Hope that rises in our hearts is like a buoyant bubble of champagne; for some, it brings tears of relief, while others, may sense a new way to the future that will bring healing to us -- personally, communally, nationally, globally -- to all of Creation. Hope recognizes that many challenges await us on the path, obstacles and possible pitfalls that may delay outcome. In hope we are made new; for it is a sure and steadfast anchor of our soul that enters "the inner shrine behind the curtain," where the Divine Guest abides. So, in the Silence, let us embrace Love and dare to hope: the promise for all of Creation.
Angels are forms, images and expressions through which the essences and energy forces of God can be transmitted; and, since there are an infinite number of these forms, the greatest service anyone can pay the angelic host is never consciously to limit the ways angels might appear to us.
O sovereign angel,
Wide-winged stranger
above a forgetful earth,
Care for me, care for me,
Keep me unaware of danger
And not regretful
And not forgetful
of my innocent birth.
Living with an awareness of the companioning presence of angels . . . we come to realize angelic joy is working with us, surprising us, and reminding us that we are loved beyond measure. Limit not the myriad ways your angelic companions may knock on the door of your heart. Spending time in the Silence draws them nigh.
I stood in the back corner watching them. They resembled three veterans who had met once more on a cold day after years of separation, and had lit a fire to warm themselves. I had pricked up my ears to overhear what they said, but none of them opened his mouth. You felt the air between them was vibrating and that a string of unspoken words was being unwound from mouth to mouth. Without the slightest doubt, this was how the angels spoke in heaven. How long did their silence last -- how many hours? It seemed to me time had come to a standstill, that one hour and one century were of the same length.
Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit, for without being seen, they are present with you.
There is a medieval belief that angels want to sing to us. It makes them happy to do so. All we have to do is listen.
No one on earth could feel like this,
I'm thrown and overblown with bliss
There must be an angel
Playing with my heart.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Know there are those who harken when we pray,
And succour from the realms of Light will send.
Ever at hand to guide us, or defend,
Till breaks at last the dawning of our Day.
If human beings knew that good and powerful beings were watching us, maybe we would stand up more erect and be more beautiful ourselves. We would be inspired to live up to our dignity.
It takes practice to spot angelic presences. But practice alone is not enough, unless one can practice being taken by surprise.
As James Maxton cemented and grouted the seven angels, he underwent a spiritual transformation. A diabetic, coming off drugs, James suffered pain and swelling in his feet. He could only work three hours a day. Once every hour, he would limp back to his house and bathe his feet in ice. It wasn't until he completed the icons that James saw the beauty of what he had created. "I got all choked up," he says. "For me it was a spiritual awakening, just looking at them, seeing the people all around looking at the angels, too. I like to say I was reborn in that garden. It was my personal resurrection."
Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
On Thee the Angels look and are at peace; that is why they have perfect bliss. They never can lose their blessedness, for they never can lose Thee. They have no anxiety, no misgivings -- because they love the Creator.
We all have angels watching us . . .
What will bring their help?
Asking . . Giving thanks.
To evoke angels . . . we need only to live in quiet expectation of their presence and attune ourselves to their heedings. . . . From time to time, angels conceive and bring about serendipitous experiences and events in our lives to remind us that we are continually in God's care and that we are part of a divinely ordered universe.
Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for thirty minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence. The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence. . . . To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called "a habit of silence." It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.
We come to know the power of Silence
In deep meditation; here,
True Wisdom emerges silently,
Rising up from the Mystery
Of the unseen Source within all.
Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world. . . . Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armory and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programs. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you. These are some wonderful lines from the French poet Rene Char: "Intensity is silent, its image is not. I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me." Here is an image of silence as the force that discloses hidden depth. Silence is the sister of the divine.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly. We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Silence is the matrix from which word is born, the home to which word returns through understanding. Word (in contrast to chatter) does not break the silence.
In a genuine word, silence comes to word. In genuine understanding, word comes home into silence. For those who know only the world of words, silence is mere emptiness. But our silent heart knows the paradox: the emptiness of silence is inexhaustibly rich; all the words in the world are merely a trickle of its fullness.
each evening
is a softly
glowing
entrance
into
darkness
stillness
silence
May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.
Lindbergh wrote more than fifty years ago, "Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives -- which tend to throw us off balance."
But our spirit has an instinct for silence. Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion. A filling up.
Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self -- the false self -- and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. . . all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
A loving silence has far more power to heal than the most well-intentioned words.
Coming to the red-brick church, we slip inside to rest, reflect, and lay prayerful hands on our ailing bodies. The sanctuary is empty. We sidle into pews, remove our hats, gloves, coats. Silence. Yank off our shoes. Silence.
Unlike the silence of a library with its absence of noise, of outward distractions, its rules and kindly librarians who shhhh! at you, in the empty church the silence is different. It's all about presence. Presence you can't name for what it truly is, can't see, but you can feel, if you bring your heart across the threshold of the outside world. This church could as easily be a synagogue, mosque, or a temple. There you meet yourself, and that inexpressible mystery that lies beyond you. This presence requires reverence, not obedience. We kneel at the shrine with no donation to make but our prayers -- for things beyond words, prayers of the open heart. This silence is alive, making possible a change. Silence