Stone is storyteller.
Stone is meditation master.
Stone performs the dance of stillness.
The earth gives us life. The world around is beautiful and meant to be viewed with respect and wonder... The Sioux holy man, Black Elk, expressed it well when he said that any place you are is the center of the world. This beautiful creation is always speaking to us, it is just that we sometimes do not stop to look and listen. We forget to see as we were meant to see, not just through our eyes, but through the eye of the heart.
"The world is a sacred place and a sacred process," I told her, "and we're part of it."
“That's excellent -- simple and to the point. This is what was understood -- and is still understood among Leaver peoples. Wherever you were in the world, you found people who took it for granted that the world is a sacred place, and that we belong in that sacred place as much as any creature in the world." Smiling, she looked around the park, as if giving it a silent farewell. Then she included me in the smile as she said, "Maybe someday someone will find a way to say it that makes the ground tremble."
What a gift each morning to encounter some part of nature... It is a pure gift of beauty, of life. The sunrise can be a reminder of the day's gift because it comes unbidden. We don't produce it. The light is given. The world is reborn each morning, and we are given a whole new time of opportunity. Even if the difficulties are the same we had yesterday, we can tackle them in a new way. Primordial freshness is renewed each morning.
I often wonder what it would be like if we dared to love this life -- the fragile and the vulnerable, the endangered, daring to be humble before the magnitude of our beginnings, daring to learn our species into a stubborn and pliant wonder, until reverence shines in all that we do -- until we live an economics of reverence -- until it permeates education, development and health care, homes and relationship, arts and agriculture -- a reverence for life, for planetary, social and personal wholeness. This is our purpose now. May we do it well, with thoroughness and love.
Notice that the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are the victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego -- your need to possess and control -- and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous -- large souled.
By teaching in silence and by bringing down the force of the Light, you are asking for a very deep and very intense surrender. What is surrender?
To offer everything to the Divine is surrender. To give our live our lives to the Divine is surrender. Simplicity is surrender...Always remember, no matter how great we are, that there is something greater -- the Divine. To be humble is surrender...Whatever you do, give it to God with a grateful and humble heart.
Prayer opens the heart. Each time we pray we are connecting with a greater source of energy and we are amplifying that energy. Our gratitude, thanksgiving, for even the smallest gift we have received, allows our heart to open. The more the heart opens, the larger our vision becomes. This prayer, this energy, links us with all the goodness on the planet.
As you open yourself to your soul, a calming sense of peace and connectedness develops within you. This peaceful feeling deepens your levels of thought, releases the innate healing powers of your body, reminds you to be grateful for all the gifts of life, and broadens your perspective, so that you can be at peace with the way things are.
We seat ourselves so that we are evenly spaced from one another and begin to meditate. In my own meditation, I see how I have tried to control a situation in which a friend wanted to participate -- a situation that was actually beyond my control. In retrospect, I recognize that the presence of my friend has been a blessing. In gratitude, I realize that I must always be ready to shift and adapt, for in rigid resistance, I might miss my greatest opportunities.