Please come home.
Please come home into your own body.
Your own vessel, your own earth.
Please come home into each and every cell,
And fully into the space that surrounds you.
As many of you know, Nan published six books from 1996 - 2009. These are:
Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness--1996
Meditations and Mandalas: Simple Songs for the Spiritual Life--1999
Lumen Christi: Journey to Awakening--2002
Journey Into Love: From Fear to Freedom--2007
Walking with Wisdom--2009
These five titles are widely available in bookstores and online. The sixth, Peace Planet: Light for Our World, was self-published and can be ordered from Friends of Silence. Contact Anne (annestrad@sbcglobal.net or 11 Cardiff Lane, Hannibal, MO, 63401) for further information).
Psalms for Praying is perhaps Nan’s best known work. Over a period of years, she reworked the Hebrew Psalms, not, as she writes, "to replace the well-loved . . . Psalms of the Hebrew Scripture" but to "stand as a companion, a dialogue, if you will, of one age speaking with a later age."
O my Beloved, you are my shepherd, I shall not want; You bring me to green pastures for rest and lead me beside still waters renewing my spirit, You restore my soul. You lead me in the path of goodness to follow Love’s way.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow and of death, I am not afraid; For You are ever with me; Your rod and Your staff, they guide me, they give me strength and comfort.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of all my fears; you bless me with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the heart of the Beloved forever.
Blessed are you who walk with goodness, who stand for the right, who live in truth. . . . You are like an acorn planted in fertile soil that grows into a mighty oak. Your life blesses others, you radiate love; joy delights your heart.
Listen deeply to others and encourage their aspirations by word, by deed, or in deep silence. Live in a way that draws peace, beauty, harmony, and justice toward others and all of creation. Become an ambassador of peace through loving service.
As Mechtild of Magdeburg said, "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw -- and knew I saw -- all things in God and God in all things." Everything else suddenly fell into perspective in the light of this awareness. In time, I was to discover that once Life had found me, once Love had taken me by the hand, there was no way I could stop the inner pilgrimage. . . . There was no turning back. . . . To choose Life with deep conviction and commitment is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves, our families, our global neighbors, as well as the planet and ourselves.
Awakening is an ongoing journey. To begin to see and to turn our lives around is only the beginning. . . . This road humbles us and gives us strength to repent, to ask forgiveness, to simplify and discard all that is not Life-giving, and to abandon ourselves into Love’s hands. . . .
I’ve learned to love and to trust the Mystery not needing to know the future. I no longer take Grace for granted -- it is pure gift. . . . My essential course of action is simply to be in the Eternal Now, ready to follow the small, still voice heard in the Silence.
Warm greetings, dear friends, on a cold winter's day! The sun sparkles on a field of snow, dazzling us with a sudden awareness of the miracles Love wrought in creating our beautiful world. Perhaps one of the greatest of these miracles is that a spark of the Great Love also exists in every one of us. The seeds of Love are planted in our hearts that we may blanket the world with fields of love. We have only to open our hearts to enable that love to grow and bloom and spread across our world. Look deeply into your own heart as you sit within the silence . . . find the love there, and as the husk falls away from the seed, allowing it to grow and bloom, allow any hardness of heart to dissolve into the flame of Love. Love can change the world!
New Year's Greetings, dear friends of silence! As we move through the winter season, let us, like the earth, lie fallow for a while, allowing unseen and as yet unknown life to gestate within our depths. With deep humility, let us reflect in the silence upon what it means to surrender to the Divine Spark that resides in each of us and allow that creative Life Force to do with us what it will. It is a gift of this quieter season that we can be released from our ego-driven lives and draw closer to the source of Love in the silent darkness. Let us surrender ourselves in humble recognition that we are called, through faith, simply to be open and accepting; to listen, without expectations, to whatever is coming to birth within us. We are called to a humble openness, to walk the way of goodness with the comfort of Love, at one with all humanity and with our earth. May we surrender to the call, whatever it may be, as it comes to each of us.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Winter Greetings, dear friends, and deep peace of the season's first silent snowfall to each of you. As we naturally turn inward in response to the more reflective nature of the season, may we find there reminders that we can carry the peace of this slower, quieter season within us to every place and every time. For peace, fostered by silent communion with the Love that ever accompanies us, is not confined to any outward season or circumstance. Rather, it is born of our constant awareness of and gratitude for the companioning Presence that accompanies us all the days of our lives. May our innate longing for peace foster a growing ability to nurture it within ourselves and each other by turning within in silence. Discover the "still point" of peace within your sacred heart-space and listen for the Word to be heard.
