winter, clarity

In order to make it easier to keep your thoughts continually on God in accordance with your wish and your need, this is what you can do. First, love solitude and silence, which greatly help the spirit within, and sacred meditation. Second, choose to read books that are sound spiritually. Pause frequently, trying to appreciate rather than understand or remember them. And third, throughout the day turn to God in prayer about all that takes place... All will be well in time.

Mindfulness is meditation in action and involves a "be here now" approach that allows life to unfold without the limitation of pre-judgment. It means being open to an awareness of the moment as it is and to what the moment could hold. It is a relaxed state of attentiveness to both the inner world of thoughts and feelings and the outer world of actions and perceptions.

Prayer, Silence and Wisdom are sisters.

Memo to God: I've been demanding and demanding things from You, often quite rudely, in fact often very rudely, like an ill-bred spoilt child, but I think prayer must have made me better mannered or perhaps it's helped me grow up a little and now I should like to say politely: "thank you very much" -- not just for staying with me no matter how unpleasant I was, but for actually moving closer and surrounding me with people who care.

There is a contemplative
in all of us,
almost strangled
but still alive,
who carves quiet
enjoyment of the Now,
and longs to touch
the seamless
garment of silence
which makes whole.

Leisure is a form of silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean "dumbness" or "noiselessness"; it means more nearly that the soul's power to "answer" to the reality of the world is left undisturbed. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation ... When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep ... It is in these silent receptive moments that our souls are sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together.

Here is peace to store within the breast
Against the days of tumult and despair.
Within this cool green light the heart can rest,
The body strengthens in the clear, clean air,
The soul grows tall,
the viol-string tensions cease
Here in this summer stillness, summer peace.

How rare in our world to sit absolutely still for an hour, not thinking, not even feeling, simply being in the presence of great beauty! At first one notices the small things, the subtle changes as wind suddenly ruffles a small space in the water, the amber color of still water over sand, or the reflection of a single tree; but little by little, it is the whole unified scene that takes over. And it is the silence itself that unifies it. One slides down deep deep into contemplation. This is not ecstasy like the light on lavender petals. It is more like prayer. Beauty beyond our understanding and beyond our uniqueness as individuals. Presence that asks nothing of us except to be in its presence. And filled with that presence, we walk back into our separate lives.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

In the midst of silence a hidden word was spoken to me. Where is this Silence, and where is the place in which this word is spoken? It is in the purest that the soul can produce, in her noblest part, in the ground, even the Being of the Soul.