Jackson Community Church

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Weekly Meditations

C3: COCKTAILS & CHRISTIAN CONVERSATIONS
Fri, April 23 @ 5pm

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C3: COCKTAILS & CHRISTIAN CONVERSATIONS

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FOCAL TEXTS:

John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
       After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.21 Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
       When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Hebrews 1: 1-3
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,  whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 3 He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

SOME BACKGROUND TEXTS about BREATH of GOD

BREATH of GOD

Genesis 1: 1-2
1 When God began to create the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Genesis 2: 4, 7

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 7 then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground[c] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Ezekiel 37:1-10 The Valley of Dry Bones

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath[a] to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath[b] in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
      7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:[c] Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath,[d] and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Job 12:9-11
9 Who among all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
10 In his hand is the life of every living thing
    and the breath of every human being.

Job 32:7-97 
I said, ‘Let days speak
    and many years teach wisdom.’
8 But truly it is the spirit in a mortal,
    the breath of the Almighty[a] that makes for understanding.

Ecclesiastes 11:5
Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.

Psalm 33: 6-9
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made
    and all their host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle;
    he put the deeps in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
    let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him,
9 for he spoke, and it came to be;
    he commanded, and it stood firm.

Isaiah 40:28
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Isaiah 42:5
Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:

Emmaus Reflections

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Calendar, Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SONGS anout WALKING TOGETHER and EMMAUS:

POEMS recited:

Servant Girl at Emmaus
— Denise Levertov (inspired by the painting above by Diego Valázquez  c.1620)

She listens, listens, holding her breath.
Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once,
across the crowd, as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her?
Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face—?
The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning,
alive?
Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen,
absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

What is Hope?
— Rubem Alves – Brazilian Theologian
What is hope?
It is a presentiment that imagination is more real
and reality less real than it looks.
It is a hunch
that the overwhelming brutality of facts
that oppress and repress is not the last word.
It is a suspicion
that reality is more complex
than realism wants us to believe
and that the frontiers of the possible
are not determined by the limits of the actual
and that in a miraculous and unexpected way
life is preparing the creative events
which will open the way to freedom and resurrection….
The two, suffering and hope, live from each other.
Suffering without hope
produces resentment and despair,
hope without suffering
creates illusions, naiveté, and drunkenness….
Let us plant dates
even though those who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret discipline.
It is a refusal to let the creative act
be dissolved in immediate sense experience
and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined love
is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints
the courage to die for the future they envisaged.
They make their own bodies
the seed of their highest hope.

Looking Back from Emmaus — Christine, Faith in Grey Places: https://faith.workthegreymatter.com/emmaus-poem-looking-back/

He told us 
everything happened for a reason.

And you know, ordinarily, 
I wouldn’t have believed him.
A stranger on the road
No one we know 
Not even aware 
of why we were grieving.

It seemed.

It’s such an easy thing
To dismiss the pain,
To claim there was a reason why,
Make it make sense,
Who are you comforting really?

But this time was different.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know
Or wouldn’t reckon with
What we’d witnessed.
He saw it all.
Much like he’d seen it all
As it was happening.

And that wasn’t the strangest part.

Because he didn’t tell us that
Some day we’ll look back
And it’ll all make sense.
Rather, we could look back now.
Like everything pointed to now.
The picture was complete
If we could but see it.

Our hearts were burning inside us.

And I wonder, 
If we’d met him a day sooner, 
What we’d have said.
Whether we’d have welcomed him
Or asked to share bread.

But I guess,
In this at least,
Everything happened for a reason.

Conversation — William Cowper

It happen’d on a solemn eventide,
Soon after He that was our surety died,
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,
The scene of all those sorrows left behind,
Sought their own village, busied as they went
In musings worthy of the great event:
They spake of him they loved, of him whose life,
Though blameless, had incurr’d perpetual strife,
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,
A deep memorial graven on their hearts.
The recollection, like a vein of ore,
The farther traced enrich’d them still the more;

They thought him, and they justly thought him, one
Sent to do more than he appear’d to have done,
To exalt a people, and to place them high
Above all else, and wonder’d he should die.
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,
A stranger join’d them, courteous as a friend,
And ask’d them with a kind engaging air
What their affliction was, and begg’d a share.
Inform’d, he gathered up the broken thread,
And truth and wisdom gracing all he said,
Explain’d, illustrated, and search’d so well
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell,
That reaching home, the night, they said is near,
We must not now be parted, sojourn here.
The new acquaintance soon became a guest,
And made so welcome at their simple feast,
He bless’d the bread, but vanish’d at the word,
And left them both exclaiming, ’Twas the Lord!
Did not our hearts feel all he deign’d to say,
Did they not burn within us by the way?

The Road to Emmaus — Sandra R. Duguid

There have been crucifixions, too,
in our town–innocents
gunned down in their doorways
or in school halls; or radiations
black outlines, three crosses
marked a sisters chest: no wonder
we walk in quiet rage, musing

And who, on this road, will join us,
seeming unaware
of the worst news in the neighborhood,
but spelling out the history of the prophets
and a future:
       Ought not Christ to have suffered these things
       and to enter into his glory?
Could our hearts still burn within us?

Will we ask the stranger to stay?
Break bread? And how
will our well-hammered and nailed
kitchens and bedrooms appear to us
when we understand who he is
just as he steals away?

Emmaus 1 — Malcolm Guite — Luke 24:17 ‘He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast’.

And do you ask what I am speaking of
Although you know the whole tale of my heart;
Its longing and its loss, its hopeless love?
You walk beside me now and take my part

As though a stranger, one who doesn’t know
The pit of disappointment, the despair
The jolts and shudders of my letting go,
My aching for the one who isn’t there.

And yet you know my darkness from within,
My cry of dereliction is your own,
You bore the isolation of my sin
Alone, that I need never be alone.

Now you reveal the meaning of my story
That I, who burn with shame, might blaze with glory.

Emmaus 2 — Malcolm Guite— Luke 24:25-26 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?

We thought that everything was lost and gone,
Disaster on disaster overtook us
The night we left our Jesus all alone
And we were scattered, and our faith forsook us.

But oh that foul Friday proved far worse,
For we had hoped that he had been the one,
Till crucifixion proved he was a curse,
And on the cross our hopes were all undone.

Oh foolish foolish heart why do you grieve?
Here is good news and comfort to your soul:
Open your mind to scripture and believe
He bore the curse for you to make you whole

The living God was numbered with the dead
That He might bring you Life in broken bread.

Words of Remembering 
— Maren Tirabassi

We come from heart-felt “Hosannas,”
and a long season
of feeling like withered fig trees.

We come from an alabaster jar
abundance of love and hard questions.

We recognize experiences
of betrayal, denial,
and the feeling that everyone we love
has fallen asleep and left us alone,
so we recognize this holy story.

We remember Jesus washed feet
and offered a covenant
of himself broken and poured out
for a small group of followers long ago
and for us in our time,

and was risen on Easter
though, even in the joy of resurrection,
he kept blessing and teaching,
accepting hospitality
and giving us hope to eat.

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS
— J. Michael Sparough, S.J.

Our eyes falling down to the ground,
Our hearts dry as the dust we trample.
A stranger joins our journey to despair.
Teasing out the details of what our hope had been,
He listens on and on until our grief can say no more,
Only then can his words water our withered spirits.
Gently chiding, strongly guiding, weaving a story
Of glory hidden within fabled prophecies of faith.
Later will we recall how fiercely our hearts did burn.
But now it is our turn, the time to beg him to linger,
A request he can never refuse, for his very presence
Is sacred space, every home he visits his sanctuary.
For those who have eyes to see, his bread blessed,
Broken and shared – so much more than merely a meal.
His visitation no longer con@ined to history.
This road we walked with him still beckons —
To journey back from where we once despaired,
Our eyes now open in hopeful recognition.

The Road to Emmaus

— Anna Louise Strong

How many tread, in the twilight,
With hearts that are crushed and still,
The road that leads to the valley,
Away from the templed hill.

They are leaving their beautiful city,
The place where their hopes turned fears;
And naught remains of their longings
Save bitter, hopeless tears.

The Comforter draws near them
As they their steps retrace,
But their eyes are dimmed with weeping,
They see not the Master’s face.

He walks in the twilight beside them,
Tenderly bidding: “Rejoice.”
But they see Him not for sorrow,
They know not the Master’s voice.

And he follows, patient, loving,
On to the journey’s end,
Till a light breaks in upon them,
And they see in the stranger their Friend.

And they know what seemed destruction
Was life in God’s great plan.
And they glimpse His wondrous workings
In the destiny of man.

Back to the beautiful city,
Back to the templed hill,
They turn with joy, proclaiming
“The Lord is with us still.”

Emmaus Blessing
— Jan Richardson

Already a blessing
in the walking

already a blessing
on the road

already a blessing
drawing near

already a blessing
in the listening

already a blessing
in the burning hearts

already a blessing
in the almost evening

already a blessing
in the staying

already a blessing
at the table

already a blessing
in the bread

already a blessing
in the breaking

already a blessing
finally known

already a blessing
give us eyes

already a blessing
let us see.

Lenten Reflection Day 47 – EASTER (April 9): SPRING FORTH (Isaiah 42:1-9).

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , ,

POEM: Joyce Sidman: The Season’s Campaign (excerpt): We burst forth …

SONG: Ezinma: Vivaldi Springs Forth: https://youtu.be/B84U_5C-ho0

QUOTE:  Juan Mascaro: The thought manifests the word; The word manifests the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character; So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let them spring forth from love Born out of compassion for all beings. As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become…

Easter poems, songs, and commentary

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly Meditations

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
― Mary Oliver

Here Comes the Sun
— The Beatles lyrics by George Harrison
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all right

Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front (excerpt)— Wendell Berry

… Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

EASTER BLESSING — John O’Donohue

On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.

We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.

Easter Meditations

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields…
Watch, now,
how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
― Mary Oliver

No mud, no lotus. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Our lives, if we are to be saved, must stand as a testament to that legacy which, beyond our doing, is inescapable. Cowardice and complicity must die in us. And we must rise again to “love” a new world into existence. — Eddie S. Glaude What has always been basic to Easter, or resurrection, is crucifixion. If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that relationship and emphasize instead the calamity of the event. If you emphasize the calamity, you look for someone to blame… But crucifixion is not a calamity if it leads to new life. Through Christ’s crucifixion we were unshelled, which enabled us to be born to resurrection. That is not a calamity. So, we must take a fresh look at this event if its symbolism is to be sensed. — Joseph Campbell

Let go. Let it die. And be reborn.— Jim Lockard

It happens to all of us. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.  ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. — Pope John Paul II

On Easter Day the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer. — Douglas Horton
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. — Mahatma Gandhi

A rebirth out of spiritual adversity causes us to become new creatures. — James Faust

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Every time Jesus rises in our own hearts in new ways, the Resurrection happens again. Every time we see Jesus where we did not recognize him before — in the faces of the poor, in the love of the unloved, in the revelatory moments of life, Jesus rises anew. The real proof of the Resurrection lies not in the transformation of Jesus alone but in the transformation awaiting us who accept it. To say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ . . . who rose from the dead,’ is to say something about myself at the same time. It says that I myself am ready to be transformed. Once the Christ-life rises in me, I rise to new life as well. — Joan Chittister

Resurrection Isn’t Reversal (excerpt) — Nadia Bolz-Weber

So, I have some Easter-related questions, God. I’m wondering – that one dawn, so many years ago, when Jesus came out of his own tomb, did he step haltingly toward the light or did he run?  Did he know who he was right away, or did that take a minute? Did he harbor resentments about his faltering friends or was he free? 
… My Easter request is this: Help us remember that resurrection isn’t reversal, that as we return to life, we are carrying our own wounds from loss and isolation. But we are also emerging with new beauty and new wisdom. We are not who we were. But we do get to discover who we are. Help us not foreclose on each other. Maybe just grant us a holy curiosity for a while?

Please give me courage to trust the hope I feel right now. Save me from squandering this moment of new life. Remind me that all the fear and cynicism in the world never protects me from pain and disappointment in the way I think they will. Give us back to each other when the time is right. May we recognize you, our wounded and resurrected God, in our belly laughs and crocodile tears…and maybe … even in each other. Amen.

Questions that Easter Answers (excerpts) — Dr Martin Luther King

I’m here to tell you this morning that you don’t see me. You look here, and you see my body. You see my external being. You see something that’s merely a manifestation of something else. But the real me, you can never see. You can never see that something that the psychologists call my personality. You can never see my mind. You can never see my ideas. You can only see my body, and my body can’t think. My body can’t reason. My body only moves at the dictates of my mind. And so this morning, Easter tells us that everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. The visible is a shadow cast by the invisible. Easter cries out to us that the idealists are right, that it is ultimately mind, personality, spiritual forces that are eternal and not merely these material things that we look about and see.

… That’s what Easter says to us, that the forces of darkness, the forces of evil, the forces of justice must finally come to the light and must finally come to the forefront. And the forces of darkness and evil must finally pass away.

… This is the Easter message, this is the question that it answers. It says to us that love is the most durable power in the world. — Martin Luther King

Come to the Easter Party — Ann Weems

I think on Easter morning we should throw confetti in church!
No?
 
What about a little fanfare?
A deafening drum roll?
A three-minute standing ovation?
What?  Have we had the drums beaten out of us
That we in the celebrative community can’t really
Get excited about God’s aliveness?
 
About God’s love given to us unconditionally?
Have we given Easter to the lily bearers, the bunny rabbits,
the patent leather shoes?
 
Let’s face it:  we live as though we don’t believe in Easter . . .
 
Easter scares us
Because we’re the people who can’t believe
That God gives us abundant Life;
 
We think we have to earn it.
In our pull-yourself-up by-your-own-bootstraps society
It’s hard to remember that God doesn’t buy the self-made man.
So we in the church spend our lives showing God
What good people we are,
What achievers we are,
How much we deserve God’s love.
 
We want to pay our own way,
But Easter says it’s already been paid!
Easter says, no matter how prodigal,
We can go home again!
So come to the Easter party!
 
Let’s celebrate that amazing grace
That in Christ’s resurrection
We are still loved even at our most outrageous.
The Lord has given us the music;
All we need do is dance it!
Come to the Easter party!

Holy Saturday Meditations

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , ,

Spring — Mary Oliver
 
And here is the serpent again.
Dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,
His cave under the black rocks,
His winter-death.
He loops around the bunches of rising grass,
Looking for the sun.
 
Well, who doesn’t want the sun after the long winter?
I step aside,
He feels the air with his soft tongue,
Around the bones of his body he moves like oil,
 
Downhill he goes
Towars the black mirrors of the spond.
Lastr night it was still so cold
I woke and went out to stand in the yard.
And there was no moon.
 
So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.
An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
Crouched in the dark for two nights,
And floated back above the horizon.

SONGS about DARKNESS

POEM

While it was still dark.
While it was still night.
While she could not see.
While she thought death held sway.
While she griev
While it was still dark, resurrection began.
—   Jan Richardson

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
— Mary Oliver

Saturday— Maren Tirabassi

Today Malchus, the high priest’s slave,
is rubbing his ear,
the woman who reached out
to touch his clothing
is enjoying (of all things)
regular menstrual cramps,
a family opens the door to a child,
because of the prodigal story
was so frequently retold
at travelers’ inns and village wells,
a tribune resigns his commission,

and Jesus is preaching to the dead,
and telling them to be ready
for his well-planned prison break,

even the guy with bigger barns,
the woman whose oil burned out
at the gate of joy,
and … he just catches Judas’ eye.

It’s never a detour
when Jesus goes to hell,
and, if Easter is really every Sunday,
Saturdays always find Jesus
visiting you, me and those dear to us
who are lost in hell,

and, if we can’t find our keys,
gives us a lift.

COMMENTARY on DARKNESS

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings. —Wendell Berry
 
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. ― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

There are two ways of passing from this world – one in light and one in darkness. When one passes in light, he does not come back; but when one passes in darkness, he returns. — The Bhagavad Gita

There is a part of the soul that stirs at night, in the dark and soundless times of day, when our defenses are down and our daylight distractions no longer serve to protect us from ourselves… It’s then, in the still of life, when we least expect it, that questions emerge from … our inner underworld…These questions do not call for the discovery of data; they call for the contemplation of possibility. — Joan Chittister

PRAYER — Daniel Tobin

There is something to be praised in repetition,
There is something to be praised in repetition,
For surely all life moves in seasons,
For surely all life moves in seasons;
Praised surely, for all there is–seasons, life–
Moves in repetition to be something.

Still desire for rest whispers in the body,
Still desire for rest whispers in the body,
Like the hint of a lost name or a nagging song,
Like the hint of a lost name or a nagging song.
Rest desires a name for the song, a hint,
Nagging, lost, like a still body in whispers.

Let me wait, a novice on nothing’s threshold,
Let me wait, a novice on nothing’s threshold,
Until the blown seed lifts on its diamond fulcrum,
Until the blown seed lifts on its diamond fulcrum.
Novice, blown fulcrum, let me lift on nothing
Until its threshold awaits the diamond seed.

Something waits for the body in whispers,
Diamond hint in seasons of repetition.
Or surely it lifts on a still fulcrum.
Let me rest, its novice, like all nagging life
Until desire moves, blown seed, nothing’s name.
There it is, Thresh-Hold, lost song to be praised.

The Peace of Wild Things — Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

POEM — Rumi

If you come to visit my grave,
My tomb will appear to dance.Brother!
Don’t come without a tambourine,f
or the sad can’t join in God’s celebration.
From every direction comes the sound of the harp,
and hue and cry from the drunk.
Every action will perforce give rise to another one.
God has created me from love’s wine;
even if death takes me, I am the same love.
I am intoxication; my origin is the wine of love.
Tell me: what comes from wine except intoxication?
Toward the lofty soul of Beloved
my soul is flying, lingering not even a single moment.

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark — Jan Richardson

Go slow if you can. Slower. More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome, this is no place to break your neck
by rushing, by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks have different tasks,
and if you have arrived here unawares,
if you have come in peril or in pain,
this might be no place you should dawdle.
I do not know what these shadows ask of you,
what they might hold that means you good or ill.
It is not for me to reckon
whether you should linger or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing.
That in the shadows there be a welcome.
That in the night you be encompassed
by the Love that knows your name.

COMMENTARY on SILENCE

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox. ― Nicholas Sparks
 
When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence. ― Dan Brown
 
Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. ― Brennan Manning
 
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Your silence will not protect you.  ― Audre Lorde
 
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.  ― Nadezhda Mandelstam
 
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. ― Thomas Merton
 
Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. ― Nicholas Sparks

I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.  ― Chaim Potok
 
Silence is so freaking loud. ― Sarah Dessen
 
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ― Ansel Adams
 
He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. ― Elbert Hubbard
 
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ― Virginia Woolf
 
Silence is a source of Great Strength. ― Lao Tzu
 
My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you … What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language. I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” … our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. … And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ― Audre Lorde
 
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment. ― John Steinbeck
 
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. ― Khaled Hosseini
 
In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. ― Mother Teresa
 
… you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful. ― David Levithan
 
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…maybe we could understand something. ― Federico Fellini
 
There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard. ― Arundhati Roy
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