Saying For Today: With humbleness, openness arises to receive the love already being offered us. In love, is strength; by love, is strength restored to us.
Quiet is the Flow
River De Chute... Easton, ME
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There is no need to go ... anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden, or even your bathtub.
*Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. In Lama Surya Das. Awakening to the Sacred.
True silence is rest to the mind, and it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body; nourishment and refreshment.
*William Penn. "Silence and Transcendent Presence."
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Humble yourselves, then, under Spirit's mighty hand, so Spirit may lift you up in due season. Fling all your worries upon Spirit, for Spirit cares about you.
*1 Peter 5.6-8
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In a sermon, "Finding God in a Busy World," John Killinger ends his message on prayer and solitude with the following story:
I was in Brooklyn Heights some months ago to visit the church where one of the greatest Congregationalist ministers had once preached, the great Henry Ward Beecher. In the evening, I walked with one of my hosts along the promenade that overlooks Manhattan. ... She talked about her life when she had arrived there several years before. Her husband had left her, and she was having difficulties with her only child, a daughter. She had come to this place at night thinking she could not go on. She hadn't wanted to take her life, but she didn't know how she could go on in the pain and the agony she was feeling.
She said she sat on one of the benches and looked across the bay at the city. She stared out at Liberty Island in the distance, and she watched the tugboats as they moved in and out of the bay. She sat, and she sat. The longer she sat, she said, the more her life seemed to be invested with a kind of quietness that came over her like a spirit.
Down deep she began to feel peaceful again. She said she felt somehow that God was very near to her, as if she could almost reach out and touch God. Better yet, she didn't need to reach out. God was touching her. She felt whole and complete and healed as she sat there that evening. It became a turning point in her life.
"Since then," she said, "whenever I feel under pressure at my job or from any personal problems, I come down here and sit on this very bench. I'm quiet; I feel it all over again, and everything is all right."
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In sitting quietly, awake to Spirit, we receive healing and calm. This comes to us as a gift, not a gotten. We may have something we do while sitting. Doing something can help dispose us to Grace. Some count the breath, while some follow the breath in and out. Others use prayer beads or a prayer rope. Some use a prayer word or prayer phrase - mantra. Others just sit aware and receptive, such as one might do in contemplative prayer, in Christianity, or shikantaza, in Zen Buddhism. Some keep eyes open, some close the eyes. If sitting, some sit on a chair, some on a meditation bench, and others on a meditation cushion.
We each find our way of being with Presence in quietness. And our sitting may be standing, or mindful walking, or lying down. And the way may not always be the same for us. The how is not of first importance. Of first importance is presenting ourselves available to the Light.
Our self-donation of ourselves is our admission that we cannot manage our lives. For many of us, this disclosure demands courage, for it is not popular to admit weakness. In this confession, spoken or not, somehow grace comes to us and assures us all is well and will be well. In this retreat within, we discover peace where peace was not before.
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The main deterrent to this self-donation and expression of reliance is pride. The antidote to pride is humbleness. Humbleness is not weakness, for it is strong enough to admit weakness, while pride is too afraid to appear weak to be humble. Yet, in pride, grace is blocked, and we are left alone with our weakness. With humbleness, openness arises to receive the love already being offered us. In love, is strength; by love, is strength restored to us.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
