Prayer, the one language we all can use, is at its deepest a silent language.
At some time in the life of prayer, we may come to a point where we no longer sense the need to speak. We simply wish to be still in the presence of God. We become forgetful of self. We set aside who we are and what we think we need. For a brief time we open completely to the Loving One who seeks to fill us and make us whole. Such moments leave within us deep reminders. From them we learn of the love that continues with us in the center of all things. If we find ourselves drawn into stillness, the wisest thing we can do is accept the gift of this. Accept the gift ... and know love.
Creator,
grant me the grace to long for You
and not my illusions of You,
to know You as love's questions
rather than as binding answers.
to rest in the hope
of what I do not understand about You,
and to be forever willing
to give up what I know about You
in order to seek You afresh.
At midnight the whole valley lay suspended in the mountain's spell. This was the silent center of prayer: the quiet, the poverty of darkness that made you appreciate the light. Everything bright was pure gift at midnight and praise rose to your lips for the God of the moon and stars; and if you saw a fire burning in the valley, you felt warm and somehow connected with those countless fires that burn in the hearts of people everywhere. You knew communion. And that was the great secret of prayer.
In prayer we are neither on the one hand dialoguing with an outside source who utters messages from without, nor are we simply talking to ourselves. We are reaching deeply into ourselves and sensing more clearly that we are in God's knowledge and love. We are discovering the Divine within us. We are experiencing ourselves and our lives as uttered by God, and we listen.
In prayer we are neither on the one hand dialoguing with an outside source who utters messages from without, nor are we simply talking to ourselves. We are reaching deeply into ourselves and sensing more clearly that we are in God's knowledge and love. We are discovering the Divine within us. We are experiencing ourselves and our lives as uttered by God, and we listen.
This is the only message I've been getting in prayer these days: "Forget the experts for a while. Trust your own experience." You are an offspring of the One who said, "I am who I am." If the One who gave you birth lives within you, surely you can find some resources there in your sacred Center... Remember, you are splendor!
To pray is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming set on fire by the Spirit!
Those who are accustomed to meditate will know that at a certain point you can touch the great silence, the center, the source of all good... Would that men and women would seek silence more often, as we used to do in past ages. In our Indian days we who had the welfare of the people at heart would climb high into the mountains to meditate at the rising and the setting of the sun, and we would not leave our post until we had an answer to our prayer. We did not attempt to solve our problems amidst the noise of the camp fire, but repaired to the mountain top -- not only the physical mountain, but the mountain of high consciousness. We recognized the great power which lay in the silence.
O God, in this time of change and unrest, help us to sort living truths from dying customs. Help us to have both the courage to look beyond the expected and familiar ways and the humility to recognize the wisdom of them.