winter, stillness

Listening is not always easy. In biting back the urge to interject, to advise, even to condemn, the listener gives him or her self to the other. That giving is an act of love. Dialogue, that is speaking and listening, creates a unity of being, draws us together, pulls us up and out from the "other" everyday world where we are apart into a moment of communion ... Through creative listening we imitate God, the ultimate Listener. God listens, and God waits ... drawing us upward through the sublime power of listening. Dialogue with God and with those we love is the necessary bread of life. Without it we starve.

We give you thanks,
Gentle One who has touched our soul.
You have loved us from the moment of our first waking
and have held us in joy and in grief.
Stay with us, we pray.
Grace us with your presence
and with it, the fullness of our own humanity.
Help us claim our strength and need,
our awesomeness and fragile beauty,
that encouraged by the truth
we might work to restore
compassion to the human family
and renew the face of the earth.
Amen.

In prayer, seek to make yourself into a vessel for God's Presence. See yourself as nothing; only one who is nothing can contain the fullness of the Presence.

There are times when the love of God burns so powerfully within your heart that the words of prayer seem to rush forth, quickly and without deliberation.

At such times it is not you yourself who speak; rather it is THROUGH you that the words are spoken.

A word with power is a word that comes out of the Silence...

Somehow, I must sit to listen.
Standing implies a readiness for action, for the executing of the will.
To hear You I must sit down and calm down.

The magpie mind chatters.
It doesn't know about stopping.
How helpless I feel in its automatic firing, its busy babbling.
It is impossible to hear You as long as I am full of sound.
I turn this helpless prayer toward You.
... slowly unknowing everything, becoming dark,
becoming yielding ... just sitting.

When you know, without a shadow of doubt, that the spirit of God is within you, for you have actually experienced the Presence in the silence of your heart, then you have truly grown in being. In your daily life you become a proof of this knowledge -- a witness to others by what you are. A witness in a court testifies to what has been seen, and the strength of that evidence helps to clarify the truth of the case. So, as one who knows love, you convince those with whom you come into contact, of some indefinable quality which seems to give you the ability to flow with life with a glowing radiation. Others derive strength from your strength, and their fear is dispersed -- even if only momentarily -- by your peace, your understanding of what they are going through, and by your sincere concern. What you ARE, far more than what you say or do, will be the witness of your faith.

Gentle me,
Holy One,
into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go
of heavy expectancies,
of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,
and open to the mystery.
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy
that is You.

God ... secretly and quietly ... inserts in the soul loving wisdom and knowledge.

Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware, that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source.

Eternal life is a gift of God. It is through God's love that we have eternal life, through the great love that God has for creation. And through love, all individuals have the freedom to choose whether to seek or to separate themselves from love ... Do not look to another for your connection to God. This is available to you through your mind and heart. In the silence, you will be able to hear with your mind love's voice guide you; with your heart you will feel God's great love. It is the responsibility of each individual to seek their own connection to God ... When you find that you are truly connected to God from within, then you will eliminate fear, hostility and such. Not by power or might, but by the Word of God, by taking into your life the love of God and the word of God. By accepting the goodness of God, you move toward wholeness and holiness.