An early century desert monk once shared an image:
"When the door of the steam bath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says is good ..."
Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
If you seek Wisdom in the first place, you will find that Wisdom is joyous. If you seek the joy of Wisdom in the first place, you will fall prey to illusions.
There is no authentic and sincere spiritual life without faith, hope and love; but there is no faith, hope, and love without mystical experience or, what is the same
thing, without grace.
Hope is not something subjective due to an optimistic or sanguine temperament or a desire for compensation. It is a light-force which radiates objectively and which directs creative evolution towards the world’s future. It is the celestial and spiritual counterpart of the natural and terrestrial instinct of reproduction ... In other words, hope is that which moves and directs spiritual evolution in the world.
The world is full of implicit religion, and the inspired saints and poets, who say that the birds "praise God" when they sing, are in no way mistaken. Because it is their tiny life itself which sings the "great life" and makes heard, through its countless variations, the same news which is as old as the world and as new as the day: "Life lives and vibrates in me." What homage to the source of life is expressed by these small streams of life: the birds which sing!"
~ from MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT by Valentin Tomberg
