God is Always Ready

God is always ready,
but we are very unready;
God is near to us,
but we are far from Him;
God is within, but we are without;
God is at home, but we are strangers.

Meister Eckhart

Expands His Being

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps in our souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

Meister Eckhart

Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

St. Francis of Assisi

I Would Cease to Be

God
dissolved
my mind – my separation.
I cannot describe my intimacy with Him.
How dependent is your body’s life on water and food and air?
I said to God, ‘ I will always be unless you cease to Be,’
And my Beloved replied, ‘And I
would cease to Be
if you
died.’

Teresa of Avila

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

Teresa of Avila

Let Nothing Disturb Thee

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.

Teresa of Avila

The Inward Stirring

The inward stirring and touching of God makes us hungry and yearning; for the Spirit of God hunts our spirit: and the more it touches it, the greater our hunger and our craving. And this is the life of love in its highest working, above reason and above understanding; for reason can here neither give nor take away from love, for our love is touched by the Divine love. And as I understand it, here there can never more be separation from God. God’s touch within us, for as much as we feel it, and our own loving craving, these are both created and creaturely; and therefore they may grow and increase as long as we live.

The Blessed John of Ruusboec / Ruysbroeck

The Madness of Love

The madness of love

Is a blessed fate;

And if we understood this

We would seek no other:

It brings into unity

What was divided,

And this is the truth:

Bitterness it makes sweet,

It makes the stranger a neighbor,

And what was lowly it raises on high.

Hadewijch of Antwerp

Grand is the Seen

(from Leaves of Grass, p. 679)

Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far - more lasting thou than they.

Walt Whitman

Assurances

(from Leaves of Grass, p. 554)

I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul
I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of, calm and actual faces,

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world,

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, in vain I try to think how limitless,

I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for,

(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things,

I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

Walt Whitman

Told

My teacher
was told
by
her teacher -
who loved
her:

You cannot
shoot guns
you cannot
drop bombs
your fists
are forbidden
to you
as are
mean and
hurtful
words
no matter
how
carefully
chosen.

You have one
weapon
&
one weapon
only.

Use it.

It is
your ability
to
teach.

Alice Walker

Question

God, again and again through the ages you have sent messengers

       To this pitiless world:

They have said, 'Forgive everyone,' they have said, 'Love one another -

       Rid your hearts of evil.'

They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days

We turn them away with hollow greetings, from outside the doors of

our houses.

And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless

       Under cover of night;

And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,

       No hope of redress.

I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,

In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail.

My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute:

       Black moonless night

Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this is why

       With tears in my eyes, I ask:

Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your light,

Can it be that you have forgiven them? Can it be that you love them?

Rabindranath Tagore

The Borderland - 9

I saw, in the twilight of flagging consciousness,
My body floating down an ink-black stream
With its mass of feelings, with its varied emotion,
With its many-colored life-long store of memories,
With its flute song. And as it drifted on and on
Its outlines dimmed; and among familiar tree-shaded
Villages on the banks, the sounds of evening
Worship grew faint, doors were closed, lamps
Were covered, boats were moored to the ghats. Crossings
From either side of the stream stopped; night thickened;
From the forest-branches fading birdsong offered
Self-sacrifice to a huge silence.
Dark formlessness settled over all diversity
Of land and water. As shadow, as particles, my body
Fused with endless night. I came to rest
At the altar of the stars. Alone, amazed, I stared
Upwards with hands clasped and said: 'Sun, you have removed
Your rays: show now your loveliest, kindliest form
That I may see the Person who dwells in me as in you.'

Rabindranath Tagore

My Inner Lover

I talk to my inner lover and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants -
perhaps the same one that gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it.

Kabir

Thoughts of the Moon

I know the sound of the ecstatic flute,
but I don't know whose flute it is.

A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.

A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!

When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.

The moon bird's head is filled with nothing but thoughts of the moon,
and when the next rain will come is all that the rain bird thinks of.

Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

Kabir