Maybe its that I don't feel that I have much to add to the discussion these days aside from a lot of questions and the rare glimpse of truth. Or maybe I'm getting lazy in my second year of blogging. I'd like to call it a shift in priorities. I've been much more drawn to my guitar and music in terms of creativity/expression in the past weeks and so feel keep the focus there for a while. I think it will mean a shift in style for the blog, moving from lengthier pieces to shorter, more compact bits.
Out of a number of conversations in the last week, I've heard heaps of wisdom. This one resonated particularly well with my current flow.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 1934
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Silence
From Thomas Merton's book "Contemplative Prayer". He quotes the Syrian monk, Isaac of Niniveh:
"Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence....Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will in you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself...
More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this "something" that is born of silence. If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence...after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence."
"Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence....Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will in you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself...
More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this "something" that is born of silence. If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence...after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence."
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