winter, elder

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still.

We were created for You by yourself,
and towards You our face is set.
We acknowledge You,
our maker and creator;
we adore your wisdom and pray
that it may order all our life.
We adore your goodness and mercy, and
beg them ever to sustain and help us.

The knowing heart is receptive to the intelligence of Being and is guided by Being. When the heart is awakened and purified, it establishes a connection to Spirit; our finest and noblest capacities are unlocked, our sacred humanness is revealed. What it comes down to, the distillation of all wisdoms, is this: we can rejoin our isolated wills with Love's Will through the knowing of the heart.

Pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our sleep, against our will, comes wisdom through the
awful grace of God.

Humanity is not alone in the universe, but
surrounded by infinite powers of love and
wisdom.

In the immense field of divine compassion, countless small life fields are interwoven with each other. When human hearts deepen through some form of contemplation, there emerges in them an intuition of human oneness prior to all separation ... a "communion of saints."In each religion's communal story, there is a way of handing on from generation to generation this transforming perception of universal solidarity in the Mystery. We do not learn such wisdom on our own. We receive this wisdom from someone else.

Wisdom has been defined as crystallized pain.
It is the distilled essence of experience: of
pain and pleasure, sorry and joy, darkness and light.

True wisdom emerges silently.

"Who will teach the young wisdom and discipline? "

Wisdom is not taught, systems are taught. Wisdom comes from experiencing life, or it never comes at all. And life is its own discipline.

"What produces growth and progress? "

Perhaps if we are not pushed and prodded or made to feel ashamed, we will achieve our growth — and our joy as well.

Vocation to solitude: To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, to entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who an belong completely to silence, let it soak into their bones, breathe nothing but silence, feed on silence, and turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. [Yet each of us is blessed when we offer our silence to the world as we can.]