Agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. When we rise to love on the Agape level, we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed the person does.
Agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. When we rise to love on the Agape level, we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed the person does.
The clear bead at the center changes everything,
There are no edges to my loving now,
I've heard it said that there's a window that
opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall, there's no need for fitting
the window or the latch.
Ah, the heart's a wonder, stronger than the guns of thunder! Even when we're torn asunder, love will come again.
God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.
If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
Love is my chosen food, my cup
holding me in its power.
Where I have come from,
Where'er I shall go,
Love is my birthright,
my true estate.
As the different streams
Having sources in different places
All mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Love,
Thy different paths which people take,
Through various tendencies,
Various though they appear
Crooked or straight,
All eventually lead to Thee.
A paradox: To those who really love, the more they give, the more they possess.
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
Love is the motivation behind every yearning.... In all of life, Love is seeking to discover itself. We com einto this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.
As we move through life, many situations occur and many relationships are offered to us. Each one offers an opportunity to choose fear or to choose love. If we choose love, we bless ourselves and others. If we choose fear, we cry out for love from all our woundedness. Every apparent attack is a call for love.,
Love is active wherever it exists.
Love is everyone's vocation.
The day came when I was able to see Mrs. Tweedie. I was starving for spiritual nourishmnet, for practices beyond this everyday chaos. I had so little time to meditate and I thought I would be given something I could take home with me, a special practice so I could come close to the Beloved.
And she said to me with such love,
"You don't need practices. Love your children and your husband; this is your practice. If you wash your children, remember you're washing the Beloved. If you love your husband, remember that you love the Beloved.
Anmd that has been my main practice for years.
Vocation to solitude: To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, to entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who an belong completely to silence, let it soak into their bones, breathe nothing but silence, feed on silence, and turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. [Yet each of us is blessed when we offer our silence to the world as we can.]
A state of being alone, of inwardly directed consciousness, solitude is not necessarily physical isolation. In solitude, a person claims value for one's self as a free being. The value found in turning inward is the value of self-determination and responsibility. We find self-worth in solitude, in the core of our freedom. Solitude is necessary for spiritual and professional growth; solitude gives us the ability to face ourselves, others, and God.
Let nothing disturb thee,
nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth,
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.
In the midst of winter
I discovered within me
an invincible summer.
If you are truly called to a solitary lifestyle, eventually celibacy must follow. Solitude invites the presence of God, a presence which so consumes the soul, there is no lover energy available for an intense human commitment to intimacy. The deeper one goes into spiritual solitude, the lighter one travels. But it is not for us to divest ourselves -- at our own willed choosing -- of the things that are necessary for life within society. It is for God to strip us, often painfully, of them at a time when God knows -- if we do not -- that we must go more lightly into this Heart of Love.
In desert spirituality, the desert is considered a place of solitude, silence, simplicity, and peace; a place of blessing. It is where the focus is on God -- where we meet Goad and God meets us and disarms our hearts, a place that promises transformation and strengthening; a testing ground that requires us to make choices.
When I retreat at home, I am alone in silence. And I am also with thousands of others around the world, sitting quietly, all of us bonded together in our effort, our solitude, and our prayers. Each moment of the day, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, are sitting in strong concentration, deepening awareness not only for themselves but for everyone. We are opening our hearts, alone but all-one, joining others throughout the centuries in timeless realms. We dwell in unknown realities singing a song of the revelation of the divine.
A person must learn to be alone in solitude, to listen in one's heart to the wordless speech of the Spirit, and to discover the truth bout oneself and God. Then their word to others will be a word of power, because it is a word of silence.
Prayerful awareness can lead us into solitude, which is where God calls us. It is from within this solitude we encounter the indwelling God. We could say that by fully and fearlessly embracing our solitude before God that we are enabled to become fully and fearlessly present to others. If our being in God is real, we may become as a mountainside shelter within which others may feel encouraged to continue their own dialogue with the Holy One. Thus, as we are in God, we become a place for others to be in God.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but great are those who in the midst of the crowd keep with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
For a full day and two nights I have been alone. I lay on the beach under the stars at night alone....Beauty of earth and sear and air meant more to me. I was in harmony it, melted into the universe, lost in it, as one is lost in a canticle of praise, swelling from an unknown crowd in a cathedral. I felt closer to humankind, too, even in my solitude. For it is not physical solitude that separate us from others, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation.
I grew up in this forest and I knew
These giant trees when they were nothing more than
Than slender saplings swaying in the wind;
Sought solitude, delighted in the lore
Of nature, who became my teacher first;
Walked down trails where sun and shadow meet,
Through silence softly tucked about the days;
Traced the twists and turns of every creek.
Stepping lightly through the after-glow,
Amid the falling flakes of silver white,
Belonging to the moment and the mood,
Another little creature of the night,
With quickened breath, ears attuned, who stood
... Sensing God within this winter wood!
Only solitude can provide the depth for universal friendship. Those who can be solitary have withdrawn their projections and are innately nonviolent. They have broken with the crowd, and their communities do not become rival crowds in their turn. Solitude gives us the transformational insight that all things are held together in the boundless, open community of God. To be friends with one another is only seeing what we are in God together. This insight is the criterion of all genuine holiness.
Holiness demands courage. The courage born of holiness.
If we want to live like a feather on the Wind, we must strive at least once a day to taste the peace of paradise that dwells within us.We need to find some time each day to sit quietly in peace, in stillness, savoring the mystery of God within us.Such silent sitting will not only prepare us to find "eternal rest" at the time of our death; it will help us find infinite peace in the midst of the problems of life.
Each of us has to find our own peace from within. And for peace to be real, it must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
Peace always begins within each of us. Our ability to create in the world depends on our ability, first, to work to create peace in our own lives. It's much easier to advocate peace on Earth than it is to be able to bring peace your own home. Or your own heart.
Let us pray for planetary peace ...
peace in every nation
peace in every town and city
peace in every neighborhood
peace in every home and family
peace in every heart
Grace and peace be with each friend of silence.
May our love and peace radiate out to the world.
May Peace prevail on earth!
O, Great Peacemaker
You make your Home in our hearts,
as Loving Companion Presence.
In the Silence, we come to know You;
With unreserved, radical trust,
our path is made sure.
Bonded in Love, we become empowered
to serve with mercy and justice:
One with You
One with All.
Blessed are You, O Life of our Lives!
Hear our grateful prayer,
O, Blessed Peacemaker!
Mattie Stepanik is a personal friend and one of the most remarkable young people I have known. He wanted to be a peacemaker and through his poems and own courageous example, he proves that finding peace within one's self can lead to harmony among families, communities, and nations. With wisdom and uncomplicated vision Mattie reminds us how easy it is to forgive others, to find something amazing even in the most trivial things, and to celebrate the little gifts of each day.
He looked at me, standing up on the back of the room near the door, so tense, so close to tears, I was ready to open it and run out. "You held up your truth. Now go on holding up your truth. You want world peace right now. So don't be so optimistic, you might become complacent. You must take care of your aspiration to compassion. Just WANT to make these changes, just take it on with joy. If it doesn't matter to us how long it takes for world peace, we can have it right now, with complete joy."
If we learn anything from the peace that is in us, it is that it represents the highest good to which no only persons but whole people can be called, and we cannot be content with our own serenity and, at the same time, indifferent to the swirls of anger that threaten to rend the fabric of society all around us. To do so would be to make of ourselves hypocrites, content to save ourselves and lose the world.
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The Way is everything. It's not a particular direction or a special way of doing something; it's a circle with no outside and no inside, just the pulsating of life everywhere. It excludes nothing. Therefore, as peacemakers working in the world, we exclude nothing. We'll pick and choose according to what's appropriate for us at a certain place and a certain moment. But we won't be attached to what we choose, for everything is the Way.
This is the way of peace:
Overcome evil with Goodness,
Falsehood with Truth,
and hatred with Love.
'Tis not in seeking,
'Tis not in endless striving
Thy quest is found.
Be still and listen.
Be still, and rink the silence
Of all around.
Not for the crying,
Nor for Thy loud beseeching
Will peace draw near.
Rest, with palms folded,
Rest with thine eyelids fallen --
Lo, peace is here.
The quality of life is in our own hands. But shaping it takes a spirituality of balance. "We should be peaceful in our words and deeds and in our way of life," Angela Foligno wrote. It was ancient spirituality, tried and true. And I understood it in a new way. I wrote,
"It's so true. Peace is a choice. If I didn't worry, didn't fear, didn't react negatively to things, I wouldn't be disturbed by them."
Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
sink homeward,
returning to the root.
The return to the root
is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be,
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Over the months, I kept on sending Boss a daily supply of tobacco, always wrapped in a page of BEING PEACE. One page at a time he came to like Thich Nhat Han. Every now and then, Boss even tried his best to meditate, but he was never able to stay awake early in the morning.
After eighteen months Bosshog is released from the grip of San Quentin and from the dependence on me for tobacco and BEING PEACE. Before he walked off the tier, he stood in front of my cell and together we recited what had become Boss's mantra whenever he was about to blow his top:
"Man, man ... If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
Observing silence is a way to quiet the mind and create a place within yourself to receive language from deep levels of feeling. This receptive place where silence lives is found within the heart -- the spiritual heart. Meditative silence is like the luster of green summer grass; to appreciate this living silence, learn to listen attentively. Enter into silence and let it drink you.
Suppose one undertook the discipline of speaking only what one knew was given to speak? How quiet our homes, our churches and work places would be. Our society plays very loose with words, with talk; yet there is little silence, and silence is where meaning comes from.
Outward silence is indispensable for the cultivation and improvement of inner silence.
Silent in the face of beauty
Silent in the morning light
Silent on the way of duty
Silent in the awesome night.
Silent on the way to silence
Where the Word unspoken dwells
Silent on the way to silence
Where the dear Beloved dwells.