Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home ...
One dark night
fired by love's urgent longing
ah, the sheer grace --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled
... with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where You waited for me
You whom I knew so well.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above,
O sky distill your balmy showers,
For now is risen the star of love
From the rose Mary, flower of flowers:
The clear Sun whom no cloud obscures,
Surmounting daylight undefiled,
Has come down from Heavenly towers
And unto us is born a child.
The Child is an almost universal symbol for the soul's transformation. The child is whole, not yet divided. When we would heal the mind, we ask this child to speak to us.
There must come a winter for every seed. There must come that which protects and shields the seed toward spring, that which indeed gives its life and absorbs the hatred of winter for life, that mysterious essence which is the sacrificial aspect of life. It made the seed possible. It keeps the seed growing in the hidden ways of winter. It takes upon its heart the pangs of Christ-birth, the furor of all the Herods who represent that part of the race which bitterly had died, which had become death incarnate. She understood. He did not speak of such things. They must not be spoken within the seed. But every particle of it must know from within, in the silence.
One evening I laid my finger on my cheek and found to my surprise that it was wet. I wondered what those tears meant. What was I crying for? I wasn't consciously sad at all or consciously happy. I noticed at this moment that behind it all there was a joy, deeper than any personal joy. It was a joy in the face of the beauty of being. A joy at all the wonderful and lovable people I had already met in my life. But at the same moment, I experienced the exact opposite emotion. I hadn't known before that two such contrary feelings could coexist. Because the tears were at the same time tears of immense sadness, a sadness at what we're doing to the earth, a sadness at the people whom I have already hurt in my life, and a sadness too at my own emptiness and stupidity. I still don't know whether joy or pain had the upper hand -- both lay so close to one another.
For your prayer, your journey into God,
May you be given a small storm ... named after you.
You begin your storm under the Eye of God.
A watchful, caring eye
gazes in your direction
as you wrestle
with the life force within.
In the midst of these holy winds
In the midst of this divine wrestling
your storm journey
leads you into the eye,
Into the Eye of God
where all is calm and quiet.
A stillness beyond imagining!
Into the Eye of God
after the storm
Into the silent, beautiful darkness
Into the Eye of God.
The only name for the faculty by which we can discern the element of Beauty which is present in every fact, we must discern in every fact before it becomes truth for us, is love ... The relation between those things is simple and inextricable. When we love a fact, it becomes truth; when we attain that detachment from our passions whereby it becomes possible for us to love all facts, then we have reached our peace. If a truth cannot be loved, it is not truth, but only fact. But the fact does not change in order that it might become truth; it is we who change. All fact is beautiful; it is we who have to regain our innocence to see its beauty.
Out of the silence came a vision:
"I have seen a land shining with goodness where each person protects another's dignity as readily as their own, where war and want have ceased and all races live under the same law of love and honor. I have seen a land bright with truth where leaders extend their hands in justice rather than turning to arms, where mercy, kindness and compassion flow like deep water over the land and virtue, truth, and beauty are revered above comfort, pleasure or selfish gain ... a land where peace reigns in every heart, where faith blazes like a beacon from every hill and love like a fire from every hearth. I have seen this land and my heart yearns for it."