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Wisdom Saying
Individually and corporately ... we are conditioned to believe efficiency is everything. Efficiency is the standard by which every person and enterprise is judged in our modern, developed culture. We weigh people's worth by how well they function. ... There is much I do not know about love, but this I am certain of: love is not a function. It is a quality of being that exists beneath and before all our functions.
*Gerald G. May. The Awakened Heart. 9-10.
Comments
In contemplation we touch the unseen, though always manifesting, Wonderful Presence enveloping all creation in one Embrace of Desire. That Presence we learn is True Love, even as it is the One source within of our deepest longings and aspirations fully to know and be known.
But we initially resists being in the Love. This being does not seem as real to us, as loving to us, as worthy to us, as doing. Therefore, we escape the Silence to validate our worth by the productivity associated with doing. Our doing is our escape from the inward validation of our being in the Being of God.
The Silence is the locale we doers learn the mystery and joy of being. Being is essential to being in Love. We are not called, essentially, to doing in Love, but being in Love, for being is the prelude to doing, not doing to being.
Silence opens the wordless prayer that is already being prayed in our deepest Heart ceaselessly. This wordless Prayer is the prayer of God, is the prayer of every creature for freedom and recognition as a worthy self apart from what it does; that is, a worthiness that inheres in the self being worthy prior to doing, a nobility planted in the self by virtue of each creature arising from the Being of God.
From that Center our truest and purest yearnings cry out for recognition, our deepest hurts seek healing, and our most noble hopes implore to be recognized as worthy of attention and action.
Suggested Reflection
Contrast being and doing.
How do you integrate moments of simply being in your daily schedule?
Why are so many of us uncomfortable with Silence?
What does it mean to say there is a wordless, universal prayer arising within us at all times?
How does contemplative practice challenge our addiction to efficiency?
See next page for Invitation to writer's contemplative village, purpose of OneLife, data on ordering author's book and upcoming devotionals 2008, and material on citations.
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