I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to the flora, fauna and human life that it supports, one planet, indivisible, with safe air, water and soil, economic justice, equal rights and peace for all.
I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to the flora, fauna and human life that it supports, one planet, indivisible, with safe air, water and soil, economic justice, equal rights and peace for all.
Each of us has the responsibility to protect sacred land and life in every country of the world, in whatever way he or she can. We must remember that lightning and wind are not controlled by human boundaries. A sacred breath unifies the divine web of life. Any part that is broken affects us all. May you walk in balance.
It was architect Mies van der Rohe who said, "God dwells in the details". Scientists study fractals to find order hidden within chaos, the details of our world. Fractals -- we are finding that they suggest an underlying order in things as diverse as stock market fluctuations, flooding ... and the order hidden within the chaos of a running stream. I catch hints and whispers of a beneficent universe... Our familiar, intimate environment is a universe in itself -- and one full of delightful revelations.
Happiness is a butterfly which,
when pursued, is always
beyond our grasp, but which
if you sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.
A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
Gold doesn't vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
Must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God?
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only they who see
take off their shoes.
The all-important aim in meditation is to allow God's mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only a reality, but THE reality in our lives; to let it become that reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, to everything we are.
When you pray, do not pray half-heartedly. Pray with every part of your being. Let your physical body resound to your intention, your feelings and you thoughts. Let prayer manifest in your life's motives and in your aspirational body. Beyond all else, trust that your prayers will be answered as they are needed to be answered... Let your prayer carry the sound of your deepest love, for most surely Love is the cause of life and Love is its own effect... Love is universal, so part of our life's work is to become so universal in our words, thoughts, feelings and deeds that we become "the sounding box of God".
We parked the car at the roadside and walked onto the grass. We stood together and sent our praises to the Most High. The prayer was sweet and when I dropped my head onto the cool, grass-covered earth, I felt myself truly a servant. For just a fleeting moment my heart was full of joy. As we walked back to the car, I began to understand. Prayer is service in the absolute. It is selfless service to God. Actually, one's entire life could be a prayer.
Silence provides an atmosphere for prayer, and it preserves the growth that has been gained in prayer. People who begin to speak immediately after prayer in common, will not be able to preserve the fruits of their prayer. Their Recollection is dissipated, and they pour out all that has been accumulated within them. The observance of silence, on the other hand, allows the spirit of prayer to reverberate and take root in the heart.
You are prayer. You are a special and sacred word of God made flesh. To pronounce your own unique word is to pray the most beautiful -- if not the holiest -- of prayers.
O God of wonder and mystery, teach me by means of your wondrous, terrible, loving, all embracing silence.
Prayer begins in us the restoration of the divine image, in all its hiddenness and wonder. It brings us closer to the "region of likeness" and every prayer is an act of letting the old self go. It involves "dying". The grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies. Dead, it is destined to bear much fruit.
The gift of contemplation is eternally given; it is always there... It is that moment when the ache in my heart becomes so intense that I can no longer bear it. And in that moment, I cry out in my agony to the One I never knew and have always known. It is the moment when the depth of the ache becomes the depth of the knowing, the moment when I know that I am in the Presence of God.
In order to make it easier to keep your thoughts continually on God in accordance with your wish and your need, this is what you can do. First, love solitude and silence, which greatly help the spirit within, and sacred meditation. Second, choose to read books that are sound spiritually. Pause frequently, trying to appreciate rather than understand or remember them. And third, throughout the day turn to God in prayer about all that takes place... All will be well in time.
Mindfulness is meditation in action and involves a "be here now" approach that allows life to unfold without the limitation of pre-judgment. It means being open to an awareness of the moment as it is and to what the moment could hold. It is a relaxed state of attentiveness to both the inner world of thoughts and feelings and the outer world of actions and perceptions.
Memo to God: I've been demanding and demanding things from You, often quite rudely, in fact often very rudely, like an ill-bred spoilt child, but I think prayer must have made me better mannered or perhaps it's helped me grow up a little and now I should like to say politely: "thank you very much" -- not just for staying with me no matter how unpleasant I was, but for actually moving closer and surrounding me with people who care.
There is a contemplative
in all of us,
almost strangled
but still alive,
who carves quiet
enjoyment of the Now,
and longs to touch
the seamless
garment of silence
which makes whole.
Contact with the Divine Beloved is never complete until some other human being feels more loved and cherished as a result of its contact. Further, as all who have ever communed with the Beloved have discovered, the more deeply you encounter the Divine Lover, the more sensitively you feel the agony of the world; the more you are called to care more, feel more and think more deeply about decay in the social and moral order. You live in a state of radical empathy with all those in need. You are transparent to the agony of the world. Together with the Beloved, you must reach out to allay this suffering, or to do what you can in the light of the perspective of grace and the energy of spiritual partnership.
Ecstatic love for God -- heart and mind melted by passionate longing for Truth -- is the one essential factor in the process of awakening. Divine Presence, however one may understand and experience it, exists in and through all conscious beings... Merged in motiveless love, one experiences every moment the tremendous natural attraction of Divine Presence. This Presence is the inner guidance that we feel flowing through us as conscience, intellect, intuition, sense perception, and longing. Divine Presence alone generates the yearning of our heart, the seeking of our mind, the ease of our body, the illumination of our soul.
If your heart is not full of Love, you won't see love anywhere. But if your heart is soaked with the Presence of Love, you will recognize that presence. Where we come together in very simple ways, we sense the presence. Where people are vulnerable together in a quiet way, there is real strength. That is where the realm of LOVE is shaped.
Coming from Love is coming from the heart, the heart of the One Spirit within, and touching other hearts in unity of God's purpose and peace. Loving yourself is the first step home; loving all else is the way, the path; and being Love is the journey's end; for once you become that which you are -- LOVE -- you shall truly be Home.
Spiritual understanding centers on the acceptance of a divine truth, which gradually reveals itself, rising on the horizon of the mind till it pervades all. If the mind and its reactions are brought into willing obedience to that truth, the divine truth continues to permeate the mind even more and the mind develops with it endlessly... It is we who must yield to the love of God so that our minds may be open to the divine truth.
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love... If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world. I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody. I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God even when God is silent.
We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes... Our homesickness is alleviated only by love, the love that transcends our self-centeredness, our pettiness... When we are truly in love, not in the sense of romantic, erotic love, but in the sense of God's love for all that the Power of Love created, then our homesickness is alleviated. When we are in love we are no longer homesick, for Love is home.
For inasmuch as this flame is a flame of the Divine Life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of the life of God; and so deeply ... does it wound it and fill it with tenderness that causes it to melt in love, so that there may be fulfilled in it that which came to pass in the Bride in the Song of Songs; she conceived such great tenderness that she melted away.
We human beings are here to help each other, to support each other, to love each other. We cannot be fully human if we are isolated and alone. But to share our love, always we must first love ourselves. It may sound simple, but to live by this principle is at times not easy. Just the same, if we forget to care for our own being, then how can we ever hope to assist others? Only when we come from our own living center can we give our greatest gift to the world.
Who longs for peace must first clear any battlefield within the heart, then sow there seeds of love.
Adri told us, "LOVING IS NOTHING WITHOUT TRUTH."
I think we really understood, for the first time, how different our lives -- and the world -- would be if we could all operate out of a state of truth and love. Within a loving context it becomes safe to reveal one's own truth. In retrospect we could see that suppressing truth limited our ability to love one another. And when we limit our truth, we limit our lives.
Creation may be seen as a continuing, dynamic process guided by incomprehensible LOVE.
Tranquility
is a little child asleep,
a clear, calm sky,
the softly falling snow;
the space between all heartbeats
in which love
reminds the anxious heart:
"Be still and know."
The practice of contemplative prayer is especially valuable for advancing harmony and peace in the world. For this prayer rises, by divine grace, where there is total disarmament of the heart and unfolds in an experience of love which is the moving force of peace. Contemplation fosters a vision of the human family as united and interdependent in the mystery of God's love for all people. This silent interior prayer bridges temporarily the "already" and "not yet", this world and God's Kingdom of peace.
Although the mind's natural state is one of peace, for most of us this peace lies hidden beneath the distorting veils of faulty perceptions, thoughts and beliefs. Peace has become something that must be rediscovered and remembered through training the mind to correct its distortions. Only by training the mind to correct distorted thoughts and perceptions can the gift of peace be experienced. Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter. It must begin with your own thoughts and then extend outward. It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises.
The inner stillness of a person who truly "is peace" brings peace to the whole interconnected web of life, both inner and outer.
Gandhi reminds us that "all miracles are due to the silent and effective working of invisible forces", of which he believes nonviolence to be the most invisible and most effective. But even more subtle and invisible is the power of the Holy Spirit working through love, a love that knows no defeat because it has abandoned the need for success.
Our greatest resource in reversing the effects of this violent culture, and changing it into a culture of peace, comes from spirituality, and all that rich term implies... Profoundly transformative, it can dissolve the destructive patterns of the culture of violence which have held us captive for so long a time. Spirituality, as the inner yearning of the heart for the Divine, for the Real, awakens in us openness, gentleness, patience, deep reverence for all life forms, including the earth, intense compassion for all sentient beings, and an all-inclusive love, agape, that embraces the totality.
Meditation is the art of paying attention, of listening to your heart. Rather than withdrawing from the world, meditation can help you enjoy it more fully, more effectively, and more peacefully.
The fruit of Silence is Prayer.
The fruit of Prayer is Faith.
The fruit of Faith is Love.
The fruit of Love is Service.
The fruit of Service is Peace.
The power of quiet is great. It generates the same feelings in everything one encounters. It vibrates with the cosmic rhythm of oneness. It is everywhere, available to anyone at any time. It is us, the force within that makes us stable, trusting and loving. It is contemplation contemplating us. Peace is letting go -- returning to the silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too pure to be contained in words. This is why the tree, the stone, the river and the mountain are quiet.