Quotations

My daughter, three years old and fearless, loves nothing more than wading along the shallow shoreline outside our house. Holding hands, we walk barefoot upstream quietly in the water, stepping delicately over stones. Besides the water sounds, there is just immense silence. We stop and listen to the water. She asked me for a story; I did not have one. Listening, she turned in delight and announced, "Daddy, this water is talking." In listening to the river a kind of silence prevails, broken only by the rush of water over rocks. Such a silence is more like faint echoes, each a series of dim reverberations. They continue in you, distant yet familiar.

Prayer fulfills the need humans have for God, for inspiration, for affirmation of our own spirits. In prayer, we communicate with the essence of everything that exists, including our own essence. We have a message to share with life, with God, and we want to share it with authority. The message is coming directly from our hearts, we are talking with our divinity, with Divinity Itself. The power of prayer can lead us into love, truth, and personal freedom.

PRAYER is a way of sending out love everywhere at once.

In the quiet of this place
in the dark of the night
I wait and watch.
In the stillness of my soul
and from its fathomless depths
the senses of my heart are awake to You.
For fresh soundings of life
for new showings of light
I search in the silence of my spirit,
O Blessing God.

In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty — the duty of prayer — the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. Daily devotions were more important than daily food. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet Earth, and the Great Silence alone.

Love giving itself, losing itself and finding itself in love, and Love returning to itself, giving itself back in love — this is the eternal pattern of the universe. The nucleus throws out its protons and electrons and they circle round it, held by the attraction of Love. Beyond the molecules and atoms, beyond the protons and electrons, there is an energy, a force of life, continually welling up from the abyss of being in god, continually springing up into the light of the Word, continually flowing back to it source in the bliss of love.

Seek refuge in inner silence,
free your thoughts from
the external world and you will feel
the rays of God's goodness and love
pouring over you and the universe.

Love matters. It matters more than anything else in the world. Yet is is very easy. All you have to do is be who you really are; for you are made of love and made to love because of what you are: an interconnected part of a whole whose life and fiber is love.

How many people can you love
before it's too much, she said.

and I said I didn't think
there was any real limit

as long as you didn't care
if they loved you back.

Encircle me
Enfold me
Entrance me
With Thy peace
That I may pray
and love Thee well.

Encircle me
Embolden me
Enhance me
With Thy power
That I may ever
do Thy will.

Love has given humans very real gifts. The chief one is the divine indwelling, God's own presence within us, sustaining us by this creative action and embracing us, or trying to heal or transform us through the redeeming love that is distinctively motherly. As the spiritual journey progresses, one comes face to face with the divine presence.

Both of our families had ben crippled to some degree by prejudice, personal trauma, and tragedy, but in the most important ways both ranches had endured. So it wasn't what we did for a living that counted, nor what kind of china we dined on, nor what our houses looked like. Nor, in this one sense, did our skin color even matter very much. What counted most through the generations far more than any other factor, was how we treated those we loved and how well we loved That seemed the transcendent lesson or moral my search had revealed

The oak tree in full foliage praises the Creator, but in order to become the oak tree, the acorn has to open in the dark. Its roots have to reach deep into the earth as its branches stretch toward the light. There in the dark the shell has to crack. Only when I let go of my protective shell, when I find the crack makes me vulnerable, that opens me to the Other, only then will the night be radiant, only then will the dark be light... The spark is in everyone's soul: the spark of our Creator shining in the dark. This spark is ours to tend, to take care of until it flares into a brilliant flame, lit by God.

The light of splendor shines in the middle of the night. Who can see it? A heart which has eyes and watches.

There is a place in everyone that can carry the light. God has made it this way. God has not only given us the chance to carry the light, but has made it possible for us to kindle and strengthen the light in one another, passing the light along. This way God's light will shine forever in this world.

Throughout my whole life, during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.

The light that shines in the eye
is really the light of the heart.
The light that fills the heart
is the light of God, which is pure
and separate from the light of
intellect and senses.

The ancient hieroglyph for adoration is a gesture of opening that signified both the receipt of divine grace and the offering of the self. When a man or woman stands before God with arms opened wide, the heart is vulnerable to penetration. We allow God to slay us, to kill that which is "other" in us, then to enter and inhabit our form in order for God to know the Divine through us, to resurrect and reconstruct us as changed creatures, as bodies more fully filled with the Light of God.