The Earth is home to all creation,
to be lovingly cared for by us in
communion with the Divine Friend.
Praises be to the Creator of the cosmos!
With grateful hearts, let us give thanks!
What other return can we give to the One,
Who continues to gift us with life?
When we open our heart to the Friend,
when we live with compassion and kindness,
we walk in beauty!
We come to know the Divine Guest,
Whose companioning Presence
is ever with us.
Humility is indeed a basic spiritual virtue. It comes to us when we do not know how to proceed, when all previous teachings and certainties have been found to be unavailing. When we are in the suffocation darkness of our own hell, we are suddenly confronted by a light of radiance that illuminates our total situation. We at once accept its glow and loving warmth with relief; but as it leads us on to the fuller light, it makes demands on us. It requires nothing less than a complete change of heart, so that we may take up the darkness of the world around us in the light that had so recently lightened our own darkness ... As our depths are illuminated, so we take our place in the light of God. It is then that we know the meaning of love ... and then, it radiates to the entire cosmos as a beam of the love of God. The light of God in this way releases the love that is native to the soul but usually imprisoned in it ... To learn this love, not merely intellectually, but also in experience, is the object of all life.