February 2005 (Vol. XVIII, No. 2)
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Greeting you with love, dear friends. In deep silence we come to know You, O Divine Guest, dwelling within our hearts. You who bind the tapistry of Life, the fabric of our lives, together. Blessed are we when we hear your Word, when we are awake to you Call, and when we answer You through our loving actions.
Love flows through all life and it spins the heart. The spinnin gof the heart takes us beyond the limited vision of the mind into the vaster dimensions of our real being. Love awakens us, frees us from the prison of our ego-self, and it can also awaken the world. When the web of life starts to spin with the frequency of the conscious love and of oneness, the world can begin to awaken to its real nature.
You know, O my God, I have never desired anything but to love You, I am ambitious for no other glory. Your love has gone before me, and it has grown with me, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom. Love attracts love and my love leaps toward yours; it would like to fill the abyss which attracts it, but alas; it is not even a drop of dew lost in the ocean! For me to love You as You love me, I would have to borrow your own Love.
Agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. When we rise to love on the Agape level, we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed the person does.
The clear bead at the center changes everything,
There are no edges to my loving now,
I've heard it said that there's a window that
opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall, there's no need for fitting
the window or the latch.
Ah, the heart's a wonder, stronger than the guns of thunder! Even when we're torn asunder, love will come again.
God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.
If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
There are no limits on true self-giving. It is not just to those one likes that one makes the offering. This involves a love that issues from the very CENTER of the person's being, directed to the CENTER of the other person's being, a love that gives ALL that the person is in order to foster the other person's life, a love that is offered to EVERYONE, without exception and without condition. The love is not offered to people because they are one's friends; people become "friends" because one loves them.
Love is my chosen food, my cup
holding me in its power.
Where I have come from,
Where'er I shall go,
Love is my birthright,
my true estate.
As the different streams
Having sources in different places
All mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Love,
Thy different paths which people take,
Through various tendencies,
Various though they appear
Crooked or straight,
All eventually lead to Thee.
A paradox: To those who really love, the more they give, the more they possess.
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."
Love is the motivation behind every yearning.... In all of life, Love is seeking to discover itself. We com einto this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.
As we move through life, many situations occur and many relationships are offered to us. Each one offers an opportunity to choose fear or to choose love. If we choose love, we bless ourselves and others. If we choose fear, we cry out for love from all our woundedness. Every apparent attack is a call for love.,
The day came when I was able to see Mrs. Tweedie. I was starving for spiritual nourishmnet, for practices beyond this everyday chaos. I had so little time to meditate and I thought I would be given something I could take home with me, a special practice so I could come close to the Beloved.
And she said to me with such love,
"You don't need practices. Love your children and your husband; this is your practice. If you wash your children, remember you're washing the Beloved. If you love your husband, remember that you love the Beloved.
Anmd that has been my main practice for years.