Some times I go web wandering for sites that discuss contemplative prayer or centering prayer. I have been coming to appreciate the practice of silence as prayer. I am still better at reading about it than actually doing it. But I try...now and then. Some thoughts are gleaned from the contemplativerudder site. Some of these are notes I have pondered before. So I read Psalm 46:10 again "Be still and know that I am God."
"Nothing resembles the language of God so much as does silence."Meister Eckhard
The small truth has words that are clear;
The great truth has great silence.
Tagore
“If I have the will to stay in solitude,
confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild
fantasies jump about in my mind like
monkeys in a banana tree. The task is to
persevere in Solitude until my seductive
visitors get tired of pounding at my door
and leave me alone.”
Henri Nouwen
My beloved is silent music and sounding
solitude … a ceaseless stream of love that
springs-up every moment.
Teresa of Avila
THE SURRENDERED SOUL
“ I have to be still … to wait in darkness, and
feel it as holy. I have to be glad that my reason is
confounded, and that my faculties have no locus
of action and cannot be exerted to alter my state
….
“ I have to accept this strange scotoma of the
senses and reason, not with anger, not with
terror, but with gratitude and gladness.”
Oliver Sacks, M.D.
“Moses entered the darkness
and saw God within it.”
“ The text of Scripture is here teaching us that,
as the intellect makes progress and by a greater
and more perfect attention comes to
understand what the knowledge of reality is …
the more it approaches to contemplation … the
more it sees that the divine nature cannot be
contemplated.
“ Greater and more perfect attention advances
continually towards that which lies further within
... it is there that it sees God.
“ The true vision of what we seek consists
precisely in this – in not seeing: for what we seek
transcends … is everywhere cut-off from us by
the darkness of incomprehensibility.”
St. Gregory of Nyssa
“No one is so advanced in prayer
that they do not often have to
return to the beginning.” Teresa of Avila
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1 comment:
I recently heard some eminant someone say that if you want to find a career that will make you happy, you need to think back to what you did when you were seven.
When I was seven, as the youngest child of busy parents, I was often alone, and I spent that time making stuff and making up stories. So, it all worked out for me.
Sometimes I think I'm very fortunate to have spent so much time alone - I don't think there are many epiphanies in the middle of Times Square - you do need some time for the quiet.
Brent
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