Learning to listen with the heart moves us from the role of observers and enables us to become participants with the Creator in a world full of grace and possibility.
Plunge into matter. Plunge into God. By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us and molds us. We imagine it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact, we live steeped in its burning layers.
I took this photo several years ago, and always hoped I would have an opportunity to use it! No quotes, no references, no reflections are necessary. It says it all. And the sign can be found at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist retreat center in Woodacre, California.
And I won’t be able to participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge next week because I leave for Ireland on Monday.
🙂
You have a wild and crazy sheep in love with thorns and brambles. But please don’t get tired of looking for me! I know You won’t. For You have found me. All I have to do is stay found.
Prayer is not doing, but being. It is not words but the beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of something much greater than oneself. It is an invitation to recognize holiness, and to utter simple words–“Holy, Holy, Holy”–in response. Attentiveness is all; I sometimes think of prayer as a certain quality of attention that comes upon me when I’m busy doing something else.
– Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
I find that gazing at the ocean often brings me into the presence of something much greater than myself
I so admire the work of Etty Hillesum – the depth of her spirituality in the face of the Nazi death camps was extraordinary. On this day, Memorial Day, that we celebrate the women and men who have fought to protect us, we pray for the day when we may all experience peace and we will “study war no more.” Perhaps Etty can show us a way there.
Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: the Journal of a Young Jewish Woman
This globe at the U.N. building in New York expresses the hope of peace in our world
I took this photo several years ago, and always hoped I would have an opportunity to use it! No quotes, no references, no reflections are necessary. It says it all. And the sign can be found at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist retreat center in Woodacre, California.
OPreach 