#953
Love
Your heart can also bloom
IN THE SPRINGTIME, thousands of different kinds of flowers bloom. Your heart can also bloom. You can let your heart open up to the world. Love is possible—do not be afraid of it. Love is indispensable to life, and if in the past you have suffered because of love, you can learn how to love again.
– thich nhat hanh
Photo: Portland, Maine – August 2012
#944
Right Words – Right Life
Henri Nouwen – To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God’s presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because the right way of living always leads to the right way of speaking. When we forgive our neighbours from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak grateful words, and when we are hopeful and joyful, we will speak hopeful and joyful words.
When our words come too soon and we are not yet living what we are saying, we easily give double messages. Giving double messages – one with our words and another with our actions – makes us hypocrites. May our lives give us the right words and may our words lead us to the right life.
The best thing I can give
The best thing I can give to others is to liberate myself from the common delusions and be, for myself and for others, free so grace can work in and through me for everyone.
– Thomas Merton, Journal entry – June 29, 1968
fear
R. Rohr – A true believer is never grounded in fear. If honest self-knowledge is not good and important, then Job, Jesus, the desert fathers and mothers, Augustine, the Philokalia, Hildegard, Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Ávila were on the wrong track.
great compassion mantra
They suffer too
Usually when we suffer we think we’re the only person who suffers, and that the other person is very happy. But in fact, it’s likely that the person who hurts us also has a lot of pain and doesn’t know how to handle his strong emotions. Breathing with awareness, we generate our energy of mindfulness, and we can have insight into how to handle our suffering and that of the other person’s suffering with compassion.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
be still
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
When we come to the end of our rope and hit rock bottom
Richard Rohr ~
When we come to the end of our rope and hit rock bottom, we are not dashed but fall into God’s hands. It is here at our lowest that we discover our true source of power, the indwelling Holy Spirit. Many years ago, during a hermitage in Arizona, I had a particularly strong sense of the Holy Spirit, the One who is fully available to all of us “if we but knew the gift of God” (John 4:10). I slowly composed this prayer–imagining many names and movements of the Spirit–to awaken and strengthen this Presence within you. Recite it whenever you are losing faith in God or in yourself.
Pure Gift of God
Indwelling Presence
Promise of the Father
Life of Jesus
Pledge and Guarantee
Defense Attorney
Inner Anointing
Homing Device
Stable Witness
Peacemaker
Always Already Awareness
Compassionate Observer
God Compass
Inner Breath
Mutual Yearning
Hidden Love of God
Implanted Hope
Seething Desire
Fire of Life and Love
Truth Speaker
Flowing Stream
Wind of Change
Descending Dove
Cloud of Unknowing
Uncreated Grace
Filled Emptiness
Deepest Level of Our Longing
Sacred Wounding
Holy Healing
Will of God
Great Compassion
Inherent Victory
You who pray in us, through us, with us, for us, and in spite of us.
Amen, Alleluia!
(photo: St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome – 2002)
Edge of Atlantic 