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

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.

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

I first saw this video when it was posted by my friend Brad Jersak on Facebook. Bishop Kallistos Ware quotes from "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" by Thomas Merton, and I believe this Thomas Merton quote can also be found in part, in one on my favorite books "Palace of Nowhere" by James Finley (Amazon - http://ow.ly/nf4tG) and is one of my favorite quotes as well.

Quote:

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point, a spark, which belongs entirely to God.

It's like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody!

I have no program to seize this.  It is only given.   But the Gate of Heaven is everywhere!" 

~ Thomas Merton                  

Video:

                 

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" by Thomas Merton, Amazon - http://ow.ly/nf3VB  

Two Approaches to God

The night before my Grandpa Young died Kathleen and I took the girls to visit him in the hospital. I don't know what inspired our daughter Jessica to do this, but while we were there she got a hold of  a small piece of paper and drew him a free ticket to heaven. Jessica's ticket was a beautiful expression of God's grace to a man who really understood grace and had tried to communicate it through the thousands of sermons he had preached over his lifetime.

One of my Grandpa's favorite authors, and maybe one of the inspirations for his grace filled approach to life, was the late Methodist missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones. According to Jones there are two approaches to God. There is self-salvation where we try and reach God through our own efforts, and there is God initiated salvation where God comes to us and offers us salvation as a gift that we can receive. Jones says the key word for self-salvation is "struggle" and the key word for God initiated salvation is "surrender."

Over the past few days I have been thinking about my Grandpa and the gift of my grace filled heritage as well as Jones' breakdown of these two approaches to God and have been deeply moved. Here's how Jones breaks it down...

Self salvation:

• is never certain
• never arrives
• is self conscious and is a form of religion based upon our own efforts and achievements
• striving
• exhausting
• guilt ridden and ashamed
• self-condemning
• depends on the will and constantly needs to be "whipped up"
• depends on suppression of the spirit
• exhausts itself on the problems of life
• looks for a return on it's love and is disappointed if there is no return

God initiated salvation:

• is certain
• it helps us know we have arrived
• is available to EVERYONE
• is God conscious and based upon "the gift of God"
• relaxed, receptive, exhilarating
• non condemning, so it is free, abounding, joyous
• the will surrendered then given back purified and released
• our bodies, thoughts and emotions are surrendered and are also given back to us to be expressed on a deeper level
• based on the inexhaustible resources of God; the more it gives, the more it has to give
• asks for nothing except the privilege of giving and gets everything in return.

Learning to pray: As you pray and go throughout your day, I invite you to surrender your will, thoughts, emotions, ego, temptation, achievements, actions, self-loathing - EVERYTHING - to God, and receive the free gift of God's love and salvation. 

leaf drops