Everybody?

Monday, July 31, 2017

Thought of the day: Then English priest James Allison writes that “ . . . Jesus gave himself up for us before we even knew we needed forgiving . . .” (On Being Liked, p. 46)

There are so many people who live their lives without any sense of connection to God, or to religion, and it does us good to remember that Jesus is actively giving Himself up for them, and that their ignorance, or resistance, or hesitation, or sheer laziness doesn’t figure into the equation.

In the Psalms it says that “The fool has said in his heart: there is no God.” (Psalm 14 and Psalm 53). We should note that the Psalms are dualistic: they typically like to set the “just” and the “unjust” in opposition. (You can see this right from the beginning in Psalm 1), and they conclude that God is with the just but not with the unjust.

But New Testament thinking transcended all that. God’s love is poured out upon the innocent and the guilty; while we were “yet sinners,” Jesus died for us; Jesus continually commands us, “do not judge;” and explains to the judging Pharisees that he came not for the righteous but for sinners. Not only that but as the nails were being driven into his hands, Jesus prayed to forgive his executioners (who at that very moment were convinced they were doing the right thing). And how many times have we perhaps ended up doing the wrong things for all the right reasons; and how many times have we been satisfied by our attempts to justify the wrong things we are doing or have done?

And so, perhaps we too were at one time ignorant, resistant, hesitating or just sheer lazy, or perhaps we had lived a portion of our lives unable or unwilling to consider that there was anything in our lives that needed forgiveness---but look what happened to us!  And it might happen to others as well. As St. Paul taught us, God’s patience is ordered to our salvation. And thank God for that.

God bless you!

Not loss but liberation

Thursday, July 27, 2017

I remember a time in my life, a time of crisis, when it seemed to me that I was losing everything that I thought made up my identity. I know that it was a time of terrible and heartbreaking pain, but when I think back to that time, I don’t seem to have access to the pain any more, because when I look back, now that years have passed, I realize that what had seemed like a time of great loss actually became a time of liberation. And I have discovered new depths to my being which were unavailable to me before the stripping away took place.

I also remember praying desperately at that time, but I wasn’t praying that the pain would be taken away from me; no, I was praying simply that God would help me get through it. And that is the message of the Cross as well, isn’t it—that the way to salvation isn’t found by getting round the pain, but rather by accepting it and moving through it.

I think of the words Jesus spoke to us: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (or, as a previous translation says, will discover who he is.”)  (Matthew 10:39)

And I am reminded of something we read from the book of Wisdom, often at a funeral Mass: “their passing away was thought an affliction, and their going forth from us, utter destruction, but they are in peace.” (Wisdom 3:3)

And I also look at the crucifix and realize that the seemingly total destruction of the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary so that He could conquer death by rising from the dead. One of my teachers from the past often reminded us that “Good Friday always leads to Easter Sunday.”

Why do I reflect on these things today? Because I was inspired by a passage I read from the writings of Steve Taylor. (By the way, his little book of meditations is called “The Calm Center” and it is published by the New World Library and I gratefully recommend it to you.) Anyway, this is what I read today from his writings:

“. . . this damage is only superficial,

just to your façade, not your foundation,

and when the debris is cleared away

there will be more space inside

for your essence to shine through.”

God bless you!

Open wide your heart

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

The Gospel passage for today is the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9). The sower spread seed and some fell on the path, or on rocky ground, or among weeds and thorns; none of these yielded fruit. But when he sowed the seed upon fertile soil, it produced an abundant crop—30, 60 or 100 fold.

One of the messages we can take away from this parable is this: that God’s gifts and His graces are “sowed” among us, and it is our capacity to receive these gifts that determines how fruitful they can be.

So the question for us to ask is: what can we do to enhance our capacity to receive God’s gifts? I can’t help thinking of the line from the psalm which says “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” I also remember someone saying that when we go to Mass, we often do not bring baskets big enough to be filled with the blessings that God pours our upon us during the Mass.

We might consider how often we’ve been at Mass and have completely “missed” the readings because we were distracted or preoccupied with something else. “Some seed fell upon rocky ground.”

You might also want to reconsider the promises I listed in yesterday’s reflection:

·         The more needy you are, the more God moves mountains to take care of you.

·         The more guilty you are, the more mercy He is ready to pour into your soul.

·         The more helpless you feel, the more God sends you little flickers of hope which grow brighter once you reach out to touch them.

·         Someone once said, “God cherishes those who cling to Him for survival.”

·         The weaker you feel, the more God is ready to send you silent, enduring strength.

·         The more you have lost, the wider the new life He sends to you; be patient.

·         The more fearful you are, the more He yearns to grip you by the hand so you know you are not alone.

·         The more you doubt and question, the more wisdom He helps you acquire.

How open are you to receiving these graces?

A couple of suggestions for things to cultivate and develop:

·         greater mindfulness and awareness (and these are cultivated in silence, solitude and meditation)

·         more attention to the things of God rather than the trivialities of things we waste our attention on

·         continual reflection on the beauty that God has created around you.

·         grateful remembrance of the graces He has already bestowed on you.

·         turning to the Mother of God who, after all, has been called the “Mediatrix of all graces.”

And above all, pray to God to enlarge your heart and your mind and your understanding. These are prayers that He loves to answer for you.

God bless you!

B

Fr. Bede Camera, O.S.B.

Saint Anselm Abbey

Manchester, NH 03102

http://www.spiritualityforbeginners.blogspot.com

Reassurance

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Just a couple of things for you to consider today:

·         The more needy you are, the more God moves mountains to take care of you.

·         The more guilty you are, the more mercy He is ready to pour into your soul.

·         The more helpless you feel, the more God sends you little flickers of hope which grow brighter once you reach out to touch them.

·         Someone once said, “God cherishes those who cling to Him for survival.”

·         The weaker you feel, the more God is ready to send you silent, enduring strength.

·         The more you have lost, the wider the new life He sends to you; be patient.

·         The more fearful you are, the more He yearns to grip you by the hand so you know you are not alone.

·         The more you doubt and question, the more wisdom He helps you acquire.

God bless you!

The Author of Beauty

Monday, July 24, 2017

From the Book of Wisdom, chapter 13

For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature;

and they were unable from the good things that are seen

to know him who exists,

nor did they recognize the craftsman

while paying heed to his works;

but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air,

or the circle of the stars,

or turbulent water,

or the luminaries of heaven were

the gods that rule the world.

If through the delight in the beauty

of these things men assumed them to be gods,

let them know how much better than these is the Lord,

for the author of beauty created them.

The “author of beauty:” Can you fathom it? Can you see Him? In every beautiful thing that comes into your eyes is a direct message to you of the love of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, of the divine creativity, of how He created so many things just for His own sheer delight (and that includes y-o-u as well.)

I like seeing pictures of the fish and other creatures who live at the depths of the ocean—such colors and shapes and entrancing beings whom we were never given to see before. Why did God make them to be so beautiful? Was it simply His own delight in creating? Did He make them for Himself alone—at least until some among us developed the skills and technology to take a peak at what He had made down there?

Or consider, if you will, the beauty of a single rose or lily and realize that your God was the author of such beauty as well. And remember that He loves everything that He has created, and even those things which do not look beautiful to us might possibly take on a beauty that is known only to Him, because for Him, even darkness is as light.

Pray God to keep your eyes opened that you might see His love, He Who is the author of beauty, the author of the beauty that is around you as well as the author of the beauty that is within you.

Give thanks to him, this day, even if it is grey and rainy and cold (like it is where I am writing these lines). And yet, when I leave my window opened, I hear the sound of the rain as it falls upon the earth and realize that even that sound is a special type of music (God as percussionist?) and it too speaks to me of His love and His joy in loving.

God bless you!

the Cross and the yoke

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Today’s Gospel offers a well-known and tender message from the Lord. (Matthew 11:28-30):

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”

This is a contrast, isn’t it, to Jesus’ command for us to “take up your cross and follow Me.” The cross evokes pain and struggle and difficulty, and there aren’t two many people who would have trouble identifying the nature of the cross they carry. And I think that is a good place to start—to be honest and forthright about the way we at times feel crucified and nearly abandoned by God and by others. And I would like to propose to you that we come from that place as we allow the beauty of the Gospel passage today to penetrate our souls. The same Jesus who would at one time cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” today speaks to us in our life situations and says “come to Me.”

So often we take words or passages that are familiar to us and pass them by thinking we know everything they are meant to mean because we have heard them so many times before. And so we have to stop and silence our minds and souls to hear the Lord speak to the very pain of our lives. In this way, we approach the deepest way of learning—the experiential. Jesus Christ speaks to you in your struggle and difficulty, whatever it may be, and he says simply, “Come to me.” Don’t think; rather, experience the call issued to you at this very instance in your own life. “Come to me.”

The translation of Rilke’s poetry* says that “When I paint your portrait, God, nothing happens.” BUT I can choose to feel you.”

Choose to feel him today. Read and reread the passage from the Gospel and allow its words to penetrate more deeply into your soul than ever before. If necessary, take just one small snippet and stay with it. How about “learn from me”---a type of learning that is conducted without words, but rather transmitted with rays of love. Or perhaps picture yourself yoked with Jesus as you take the next step in your struggle.

He says “my burden is light.” Does it feel light to you? If not, call out to heaven and beg that he show you the lightness, the easiness, the rest.

Just a tiny piece of it will be enough for today.

A final verse to day from “Rilke”*:

“All creation holds its breath, listening within me,

because, to hear you, I keep silent.”

God bless you!

*I am finding that as I make my way through my volume of Rilke’s poetry that there are “translations” of his poems that seem to be unique works of art in their own right, poetic art that is more “inspired” by Rilke’s writings, than being a direct translation. The quotes I offer you today are such examples, to be sure. That is also why I put “Rilke” in quotation marks today. Needless to say, I am inspired by the poems that I am reading in English, and, as usual, they send me back to our own scriptures as well. But might we consider that these poems themselves are a form of scripture? I think they are.

Enlarging our Receptivity

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The conclusion of Rilke’s “Love Poem to God” which we’ve been reflecting on the past few days. Note that in the original, Rilke has “he.” The translators have rendered it as “she.” For our purposes, I am personalizing the verses a bit more by setting it in the first person; these lines are addressed to God:

You are the partner of my loneliness,

the unspeaking center of my monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and I stretch beyond what limits me,

to hold you.

I see this as a description of what takes place during prayer time, no matter what form my prayer may take. When I have emptied my mind, and put my cares aside so that I am alone with God as my partner, then I am not alone at all. Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that “we are never less alone than when we’re alone with God,” and that is a good way of describing God as “the center of my loneliness.”

Sometimes, I speak to God, pouring out my concerns and cares or interceding for others, and God remains at the center, silent as I speak. Nonetheless, I need to move to silence so that I can hear what He may be saying to my heart, imparting a wisdom or some other gift that doesn’t need words to be understood.

God’s “disclosures” to me stretch me beyond my limits; He is so much more than I am or can be, and yet, time and time again, he broadens my horizon, adds to my understand things I never could have understood before, and as I open myself I find that He makes it possible for me to hold him in my heart, perhaps in a way I only discover at the instant it happens.

And what is it that He discloses to me? Well, this morning, at Morning Prayer, I was moved by these verses from Psalm 94 and I share them with you hoping that you may include them in your own moments of prayer and contemplation:

When I think, “I have lost my foothold,”

your mercy, O Lord, holds me up.

When cares increase in my heart,

your consolation calms my soul. (Ps 94:18-19)

And perhaps we can “stretch” here, and begin to grasp that “mercy” and “consolation” are far more than we have thought them to be. Perhaps we can open to accept this work of God in our souls which is so much greater, so much greater, indeed.

God bless you!

In the softness of evening

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Yesterday I began reflecting on a verse from one of Rilke’s “Love Poems to God.” The reflection continues today. Here is the verse in a wider context:

it is she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of evening

it is you she receives.

We’re dealing here with a translation of a poem which was originally written in German. Last night I went back to the German for comparison and what I discovered is that the original speaks of “he,” not “she.” The very gifted translators, Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, chose to set this poem in the feminine. I’m not sure what to make of this; nonetheless, the verses are beautiful and provide much food for contemplation, no matter how it may be approached.

Today I’d like to consider it from a particular view, assuming that these lines are addressed to God. In this sense “you” at the end of the third line is God, and “she/he” is the human soul. With all that in mind, let me paraphrase the verses for you in terms of contemplative prayer:

I go to pray and my mind (“the hall”) is filled with so many loud and strident voices that I can find no peace. With an effort of will, I silence those voices and settle down so that I can let my mind be clear and empty, preparing myself so that a very different kind of special event can take place; namely, the celebration that is my time of prayer, where there room for God alone in my mind, spirit and soul. I crave these times when the one guest is God, and in the quiet softness of a silent and solitary evening,* I await his visitation.

* The Psalms speak of this quiet evening of the Lord’s visitation:

Psalm 16:7 

I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel,

who even at night directs my heart.

Psalm 17:3

Search my heart and visit me by night.

Psalm 63:7-9

When I remember you upon my bed,

I muse on you through the watches of the night.

For you have been my strength;

in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.

My soul clings fast to you;

your right hand upholds me.

Tomorrow, we’ll consider the closing stanza of this very mystical poem.

God bless you!

Dwelling with Wisdom

Monday, July 17, 2017

I am continuing my slow, contemplative reading of Rilke’s “Book of Hours: love poems to God.” The translators of the edition I am using are Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, and their work has a contemplative dimension itself and sometimes it seems to me that the beauty of their prayerful thought goes even beyond the poetry that Rilke has written. 

The poems are not long, yet it takes me more than a day or two to experience each of these works of art. I reflected on three little sections of the poetry, and I am going to continue doing the same this week. If you want to review the earlier reflections, go to my timeline on Facebook or to my blog at spiritualityforbeginners.blogspot.com.

Today’s gift is from the same poem I quoted on Friday:

In the softness of evening it is you she receives.

Who is this “she?” Is it lady wisdom, or Father-Mother God, or is it perhaps the individual soul---your soul, since in so much contemplative literature the soul is depicted as feminine, and the contemplative marriage is the union of God (male) and the soul (female). And I might even go so far as to suggest that “she” is the Blessed Mother. At any rate, over the next four days, I will comment on the quoted line with reference to all four understandings of who “she” is. Nonetheless, I must also confess that my own musings are taking me far beyond the words of the poem—but isn’t that what great poetry is supposed to do—to invite us to move even more profoundly into the mystery of life?

For today: “She” is lady wisdom. On a peaceful, solitary, reflective evening—the time shortly after the sunset—she takes you to herself, and when we spend time resting in that evening, she whispers to your soul and your being becomes more perceptive, more enlightened, more compassionate. As you emerge from the contemplative time, you become more sensitive—especially to the pain that others carry around with them, and you begin to learn to love even those you previously judged or found hard to even like.

King Solomon speaks of Wisdom:

Within my dwelling, I should take my repose beside her;

For association with her involves no bitterness

and living with her no grief,

but rather joy and gladness. (Wisdom 8:16)

And in today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 10:34-11:1), Jesus promises that “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” When read those words in light of my reflection today, I was given a new way of understanding them. When we dwell with Wisdom, when we are open to her teachings we also suffer a loss. Wisdom gently corrects our usual way of thinking, and that way must be lost so that we can begin to live with a new mind-set and perception.

Finally, I certainly encourage you to take the words above and use them as a springboard to your own meditation and contemplation.

God bless you!

Weaving it all together

Friday, July 14, 2017

I’ll finish the week with another quote from Rilke’s poetry:

“. . . She who recognizes the ill-matched threads of her life

and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth . . .”

If you were to weave a cloth from the threads of your life, which threads would you choose? Would you want to discard or set aside some of them because they wouldn’t harmonize with the picture you wish your life would be? Would you eliminate threads which you think would be unpleasing to God?

Could you use all of it: all of the stuff, all of the mess, all of the regrets and losses and mistakes? That thread that is the one thing you regret the most about your life? Those things that you never would have done if you had had the wisdom and maturity of your present life? The shames, the humilations, the embarrassments?

Can you embrace it all? God sees all of it, you know, AND God loves you, AND Jesus died for you while you were still yet a sinner.

The great truth about life is that we cannot reject anything. Psychologists tell us that if we fail to embrace what they call our “shadow side,” that side breaks forth to manifest itself yet again in our lives.

Consider all the great Biblical heroes: consider what their woven clothes would look like. One of the things I admire most about Saint Paul is that he is completely upfront about his own shadows and speaks so eloquently about them. In fact, he seems to indicate that were it not for Christ embracing him, his life would still be a mess. “I things I want to do I don’t do; the things I detest I keep on doing.” No. His woven cloth is a complete whole.

Can we strive to do the same thing?

I don’t know enough about Rilke to be able to determine who “she” is in this snippet from his poetry, but if I would venture a guess, I would guess that she is Lady Wisdom, that wisdom that often only comes later in life when we can begin to make peace with the entire fabric of our lives.

That is something we all need to do. In God’s presence.

One final thing: notice that the poem goes so far as to say that she “gratefully” weaves all the threads of her life together.

Can we allow ourselves to experience the same gratitude? That would be a wonderful thing.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.

Thirsting

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Another excerpt from Rilke’s “Love Poems to God”

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.

Casual, easy, they move in the world

as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces

of those who know their thirst.

You cherish those who grip you

for salvation.

I especially love this image of a person “gripping” God for salvation. Hanging on, maybe only by his shoelaces or taking a grip on his shirt and hoping that we can hold on tightly enough that we can be dragged into salvation despite anything and everything that may be pulling us in the other direction, or like the woman in the Gospel who believed that if she could only touch the hem of Jesus’ garment that she would be healed (and she was).

“You take pleasure in the faces of those who know their thirst.” There is so much hope in those lines, especially for those who once again are hanging on by a thread. One who knows he thirsts for God even though up until this point in his life he has chosen to live in an arid desert and has spent all his energies dragging himself towards oases that turned out to be nothing but mirages, but then suddenly the thirst is recognized for what it is: a thirst for God, and once that thirst is acknowledged it begins to be satisfied, little by little, drop by drop.

I think of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 who asks the Lord for the “living water” of which He speaks, or of the psalmist who shouts out that “my body pines for you like a dry weary land without water.” (psalm 63)

Do you remember a time in your life when you may have been going around “untouched,” complacent in your lazy ignorance? Can you recall that very first time you discovered that when you thought about God or the things of God that you experienced a pleasure that you couldn’t quite put your finger on but which was unlike any pleasure that came from the passions? If so, you are in good company, because that is what happened to St. Ignatius prior to his own conversion.

I must also remind you of the fact that Jesus said “I thirst” as He was dying on the cross. And his thirst was not for the spoiled wine they put on a reed and pressed to his mouth, but rather it was His thirst for souls.

His thirst for you.

His thirst for you thirsting for him. And in you he takes great delight.

God bless you!

Moving towards the light

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

From one of Rilke’s “Love Poems to God:”

I want to unfold.

let no place in me hold itself closed,

for where I am closed, I am false.

I want to stay clear in your sight.

Jesus talks about people wanting to hide from the light when it comes. Gospel of John, chapter 3:

“The judgment of condemnation is this: the light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked. Everyone who practices evil hates the light; he does not come near it for fear his deeds will be exposed. But he who acts in truth comes into the light, to make clear that his deeds are done in God.”

Yet consider what Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.”

So consider these pairs: darkness and light; closed and open; true and false; obscure and clear.

Which are you? Or are you, like me, a mixture of both from time to time?

What I find interesting is that people who claim to have nearly died and come back tend to report an experience of moving towards the light. And that, I think, is what we are all doing, if we so choose, on this side of death as well. The poet Rilke admits implicitly in the lines I quote above that he, too, is a mixture of both closed and open and expresses his yearning for the journey to become more honest, more free, more unencumbered, more clear.

What is your wish? What is your yearning?

God bless you!

God is in this place

Monday, July 10, 2017

Our first reading for today’s Mass was the story of Jacob and his vision of the ladder with angels ascending and descending. (Gen 28:10-22a) He was so moved by the vision that he named the place Bethel (=House of God) and he exclaimed: “Truly the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!”

I’d like to offer two brief reflections:

1) First of all, we don’t need to have a heavenly vision in order for us to exclaim “Truly the Lord is in this spot” because the Lord is in every spot, every place, every crevice and hidden pocket in the universe. Most especially, the Lord is with you right now in the place where you are. If only we could stay aware of this at all times!

2) Saint Benedict uses the image of Jacob’s ladder to introduce the chapter on humility in his Rule for Monasteries: “if we want to reach the highest summit of humility, if we desire to attain speedily that exaltation in heaven to which we climb by the humility of this present life, then by our ascending actions we must set up that ladder on which Jacob in a dream saw angels descending and ascending (Gen 28:12). Without doubt, this descent and ascent can signify only that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility.” (RB 7:5-6)

By the way, Benedict’s first step of humility calls for the monk to “recall that he is always seen by God in heaven, that his actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at every hour.” (RB 7:12). This brings us back to my first reflection above: At all times, God is “in this place” and watching over us.

God bless you!

Some miss the point

Friday, July 07, 2017

Love creates. Love heals. Love redeems.

Love reaches deep down into the hurting places.

Love reaches down into the sin-filled places.

Love heals. Love redeems.

Jesus looked upon Matthew the tax collector, a man lost in an unjust and dishonest political and economic system, a man who was a great sinner, and Jesus called him and then went to his house to eat with him, and many other sinners with gathered together for the meal. (Matthew 9:9-13)

The righteous religious looked askance at what He was doing and couldn’t understand how Love would have fellowship with such sinners, but Jesus would not allow Himself to be affected by their scorn and judgmentalism. In fact, Jesus used it as a teaching opportunity and explained to them what God was really like—this God who existed apart from their code of rules and dogma, this God who is so much greater than the narrowness of their half-blinded vision. And Jesus taught them that Love seeks out the sinner and remains with him even in the midst of his sinfulness. Jesus explained to them that God was about mercy, not One who demanded sacrifice. “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

There was a hidden message there, an irony which eluded His critics. All are sinners, and it says that in the very psalms that they prayed every day. What Jesus refers to when He speaks of the “righteous” were those who mistakenly thought they were righteous on the basis of some defined code, but who were actually sinners who were unable to recognize themselves as such.

This is true today as well. There are strident voices within the Church today who continue to inflict codes of conduct on others and who forget about the most important aspects of True Religion: mercy, love, healing, redemption. Those who are experts about the sin of others, who are passionate in pointing out what they consider to be sin, and who have constructed complex systems of thought to justify their own hatred and scorn so they can rest in their own sense of superiority, but who cannot recognize their own sin. Such folk, sadly enough, deprive themselves from tasting the incredible richness of their own religious heritage. I know people like that and perhaps you do as well. Give them little heed and return your attention to God’s love for y-o-u.

But God is love.

Love is about mercy.

Love redeems.

Love touches sin and some extraordinary cosmic explosion takes place which often takes a lifetime to work out. Just be patient.

And notice, perhaps that the story of Matthew’s redemption is written in the Gospel of Matthew.

If you were to write a Gospel of Love in your name, what tales would it have to tell? Think about this.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.

Empty as a cloudless sky

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

“Truly I have set my soul in tranquility and silence.”  (Psalm 131:2)

Every single one of us can benefit from creating more room for tranquility, silence and peace In our lives. It is important to see these things as necessities rather than as luxuries which we have little time for in our busy lives.

I’ve enjoyed some tranquil time during my vacation period and my reading has helped by reminding me just how important (and DESIRABLE) these things are. Over the vacation I had a chance to visit one of my favorite bookstores, tucked away in a hidden corner of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Whenever I go there I find at least one book which seemed to be waiting for me to discover it. (Sometimes I think that we don’t necessarily choose a book; the book chooses us, and that is what happened to me during my browsing.)

The book which “found me” is called “The Calm Center: reflections and meditations for Spiritual Awakening” by Steve Taylor.

The following lines from one of his meditations has been drawing me towards moments of contemplation, silence, stillness and peace. Perhaps they will serve you as well:

Let your mind become as empty as a cloudless sky

and as calm as the surface of a lake

until your depths are rich with stillness

and the channel is wide and clear enough

for the secrets to flow through

and reveal themselves to you.

If you can reach this state, even for a brief moment, God will speak to your heart of things which you need so, so much.

God bless you!