fall

It came to me while reflecting on that woodland encounter with the night that there are two very valuable spiritual gifts that simplicity gives to us. It seems the more we can strip our lives down to essentials, the more deliberately and awake we can live; with few wants and more time for silence and contemplation, the more we have access to our inner resources. The more lightly we walk on this earth, the more she gives to us. I call these spiritual gifts inner smiling and outgoingness of the heart.

Still—in a way—nobody sees a flower, really. It is so small—we haven't time—and to see takes time. Like to have a friend takes time.

Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.

I am simpler and more human in a setting where simplicity and the sacred human gesture are norms rather than exceptions.

nomads, natives, wanderers
carriers of life's precious elements
they know what holds value
the earth, the sky, people, fish, animals, plants, insects
all that God created is good but man is not complete
we accumulate things, build things, save things
what a load to carry on your life's journey
we are bent and slowed by the weight
let go of the things
learn from the wanderers
the diamonds and pearls will now be there for you to see.

Each age has its own tasks. For most of us now, our monasteries have no walls except the silence our meditation gathers to the center of our lives, and this is enough—it is more than enough. Our hermitage is the act of living with attention in the midst of things; amid the rhythms of work and love, the bath with the child, the endlessly growing paperwork, the ever-present likelihood of war, the necessity for taking action to help the world. For us, a good spiritual life is permeable and robust. It faces things squarely knowing the smallest moments are all we have, and that even the smallest moment is full of happiness.

I thought about the perfection of the morning, tried to name what it is about the morning that is different from the rest of the day. Is it the stillness? And, I thought, often on Sundays there is an all-day silence, or on rainy days or during off seasons; whatever this perfection might be, it's more than the absence of noises made by humans and their machines... In the purity of the morning, I understand how much more there is to the world than meets the eye...

Opening the heart, clearing the mind:
the experience of sacred emptiness.

The spirit, by its very nature, is Slow. No matter how hard you try, you cannot accelerate enlightenment. Every religion teaches the need to slow down in order to connect with the self, with others and with a higher force. In Psalm 46, the Bible says: "Be still then, and know that I am God."

Let the soul banish all that disturbs; and let the body that envelops it be still, and all the fretting of the body, and all that surrounds it; let earth and sea and air be still; and heaven itself. And then feel the Spirit streaming, pouring, rushing into you from all sides, while you are quiet in this Peace.