Monday, August 26, 2013

The Wild Peace of Things


The Peace of Wild Things


// Posted on August 26th, 2013 // Category: Quotes, http://www.soulstream.org
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.
- from Wendell Berry in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Silence Quotes

I have been re-reading "Into the Silent Land" by Fr. Martin Laird and encountering so many wonderful quotes and poems about Silence. Here's a taste (these are just from the introduction):

"This self-giving God, the Being of our being, the Life of our life, has joined to Himself two givens of human life: we are built to commune with God and we all meet death." M.L.

"... we must fly to our beloved homeland. There the Father is, and there is everything." St. Augustine 

I look towards silence.
It is not, as I heard, a peak
with natural footholds and crampons
left
by better climbers.

........

Contrary to what they say there is no map
(they may be speaking of another place)
there is only surrender...

~ Pauline Matarasso

"The joy that is silent is already within us. Its discovery is precious beyond compare ." M.L.


Saturday, August 3, 2013

Accept Prayers Limitations

"A compassionate community will not be achieved only through prayer; I pray myself, but I accept its limitations. We need to take action to develop compassion, to create inner peace within ourselves and to share that inner peace with our family and friends. Peace and warm-heartedness can then spread through the community just as ripples radiate out across the water when you drop a pebble into a pond." ~ Dalai Lama

Coffee With Jesus