Sandy and Ginny knew what they wanted to create for their neighborhood. They started with three goals: to make a safe place for everyone; to offer nourishing meals affordable to all people; to offer job training and work experience.
"We talked to a lot of people, but I was struck that one of our future customers said: 'Create a place where I can barter my labor instead of my soul.'"
Rules for an icon painter: During work, pray in order to strengthen yourself physically and spiritually; avoid, above all, useless words, and keep silence.
May the work you do make your heart sing,
and my the vocation you choose be LOVE.
God is absorbed in work, and hears
the spacious hum of bees, not the din,
and hears far-off
our screams. Perhaps
God listens for prayers in that wild solitude.
And hurries on with weaving:
till it's done, the garment woven,
our voices, clear under the familiar
blocked-out clamor of the task,
can't stop their
terrible beseeching. God
imagines it sifting through, at last, to music
in the astounded quietness, the loom idle,
the weaver at rest.
It had never been my intention to discover something new. I wa simply forced to follow the call of a voice. Now I know; it was the voice of God I wanted to hear, the voice I divined as a child, of which I dreamt when I read in the Old Testament that it sounded not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but that it was a gentle whisper. The voice of God speaks but of the soul, the soul speaks but of life, and as he soul means life, God means life itself, the beginning and end of a gigantic current which flows in eternal movement, in time and space, beyond time and space, and beyond any judgment.
The soul of the universe is never seen;
its voice alone is heard ...
It has a gentle voice like a woman,
a voice so fine and gentle that
even children cannot become afraid.
What it says is,
"Be not afraid of the universe."
According to Celtic spiritual tradition, the soul shines all around the boy like a luminous cloud. When you are very open – appreciative and trusting – with another person, your two souls flow together. This deeply felt bond with another person means you have found an ANAM CARA or "soul friend." Your ANAM CARA always beholds your light and beauty, and accepts you for who you truly are.
We allow loss of soul awareness at our own peril and that of humanity and planet Earth! We can only become authentic individuals by attending to our souls throughout our lives.
What is this precious love and laughter
Budding in our hearts?
It is the glorious sound
Of a soul waking up!
If we want to support each other's inner lies, we must remember a simple truth. The human soul does not want to be fixed, it wants simply to be seen and heard. If we want to see and hear a person's soul, there is another truth we must remember.The soul is like a wild animal – tough, resilient, and yet shy. When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show itself.
Birds inspire and uplift us with their carols... In the muslc of both birds and humans, beauty is "the wine which overflows." When the last lark has fallen silent, something holy will have vanished from the world. The chorus of life will be muted. The cathedral of the earth will have lost its choir.
Music is a DISCIPLINED feeling, sound given form and pattern through number and rhythm – the single sound of the universe bringing consciousness through incarnation in music to the inner ear of the soul . As a woman, it is the masculine creative spirit within, who brings me the sound of the music of God – unlike man, who hears it through the numinous feminine within. God's music unites all.
Listen for the special music,
the song nobody else can sing
but you.
Once a visiting musician said to me in an empty auditorium, "Play, and listen to the silence between the notes. The silence between the notes is as important as the music itself." Enhanced by the emptiness, the sound of my flute soared over the space and sang back from the far wall. But the sílences where I paused to breathe were even more lovely and articulate, creating a wholeness I had not perceived before. The silence shaped itself to the voice of the flute. The loveliness of the music depended upon my saying "yes" to the silence between my notes.
To listen to music or to sing a chant is to do something that has no practical purpose; it is just celebration and praise; it is just tasting the joy and beauty of life, the glory of God. Listening to it, even in the midst of a very purposeful day, reminds us to add the other dimension to our experience, the dimension of meaning, that makes it all worthwhile.
The formless, what is that? As a pianist, I can best begin to understand through the study of piano music: notes on a page, each one to be taken hold of by the fingers and made to sing. One learns to listen, to seek the composer's intention, to try to recapture the tempo; to give attention to every note, however small, and to love each silence... Music is a transmission from one person to another, a deepening of understanding, and an awakening to the sense of beauty and order which lives deep inside us.
The abbot said: "Let it come through you like something that doesn't belong to you."
The rock vibrates, the air is riven
Like ripe fruit splayed on a summer's day
The bird's song is used to call a mate,
Warn of danger, find a nest...
If you listen you will hear our
Universal music on the street, in the air.
It is not the splitting of reeds,
The thrumming of strings,
The thrusting of air, or tambour of skins.
It is the passion and yearning to fully
become that which we already are.
To reach out and express...
to become connected and more whole.
Erase the din of noise and hear the music.
It is all around.
One of the things he liked most about the hermitage was the silence. "Silence is my music now." He could pick up the small sounds of insects and animals. Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic to him. He liked to think of all the people going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying where he was for their sakes, "like a lighthouse keeper."
Nadia Boulanger once described a Menuhin recital: He gave a number of encores, and the last was the slow movement of Brahm's Sonata in D minor. What happened then was part of an indescribable completeness. The whole house found itself in the grip of the same mute emotion, which created silence of an extraordinary quality. Everyone understood, felt, participated in what he himself must have been feeling." Menuhin has always possessed this quality. Even as a child, his playing had an innate innocence (which is still intact) that made Einstein declare that, hearing him play, he knew there was a God.
Become the music you long to sing: the beautiful song of your soul.
My spiritual heritage included the weekly hymn by P. P. Bliss which continues to come to mind:
Sing them over again to me,
Wonderful words of Life.
Let me more of their beauty see,
Wonderful words of Life.
Words of Life and Beauty
Teach me faith and duty:
Beautiful words, wonderful words,
Wonderful words of Life.
The mystery of the voice and its potent transformative sounds may be experienced int he wonderful words of life, the tuning and vibration of the sacred breath, and the roaring silence of internal thought.
Know who you are.
Do not debase the name.
Carry it in your heart,
a root flame of love.
Walk through the world in silence.
The moment will come.
The sign will be a soft, stirring of wings,
a gold shimmer of air.
A name ís an important word with meaning and energy that identifies someone or something. Our names bring certain patterns to our lives and have the capacity to forge our destinies. A name is also used as a way of entering into a person's world, wisdom, or life ... a code ingrained is us that allows us, when it is called, to remember, recognize and respond to our purpose.
There are many truths that do not have a name. Truths do not need names. But we do. We notice truths with names much more easily than truths we have not yet named, and naming is a way of realizing a truth that we had not noticed before
A name is a holy place. The name is a womb that nourishes the one who bears it with all the love and hope mingled in the giving of the name. If not dictated by some angel, names are chosen carefully for for saints or statesmen, prophets or poets, family doctors or relatives or places with wonderful sounds. Names are chosen with love in gratitude or by faith in potential or for hope of intercession. Names carry meaning within them, every year of life drawing out the meaning of the life named.
The human being is God's representative on this earth, one who knows the true names of things. This knowing of the names is the knowing of the distinguishing characteristics of things, their innate qualities.
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch the dread essence beyond logic.
All things change when you measure them.
You might as well sing, the sound of your voice
joining the others, like water overflowing,
the name of the living God.