A saint is one who does not know how it is possible
not to love, not to help,
not to be sensitive to the anxiety of others.
….Abraham Heschel
feeling, sensing, knowing, dreaming…..these soul-gathering ways resonate deeply in the symbolic richness of the seeker in the loveliest corners of life…..the sweet love shadows that draw us into kindness, into the fire of the heart…..no, this is not the sweetness of the innocents, but rather the holy knowing of suffering and the courage to engage its nuance…
I’ve found that whatever I go through opens me to what others have gone through. This is the gut and sinew of compassion. Perhaps the noblest private act is the unheralded effort to return: to open our hearts once they’ve closed, to open our souls once they’ve shied away, to soften our minds once they’ve been hardened by the storms of our day. Always, on the inside of our hardness and shyness and numbness is the face of compassion through which we can reclaim our humanity. Our compassion waits there to revive us. When opened, our heart can touch the Oneness of things we are all a part of. Then, we can stand firmly in our being like a windmill of spirit: letting the cries of the world turn us over and over, until our turning generates a power and energy that can be of use in the world. As the wind can lift the snow off a branch, the cries altogether can somehow lift the sadness off the broken heart…….Mark Nepo
When all here is complete for us,
I pray we’ll join that every-faithed,
endlessly-expanding communion-
that great, ever-welcoming circle of dance,
of room,
of time.
Astonished to find ourselves
in such a place,
in such a Love,
may our hands- black, ivory, brown, white,
male or female-
clasp:
and having shed it,
finally know our common flesh.
Then let us dance in that place beyond time,
until we see,
mirrored on the living Earth,
hand grasping hand
with fervor,
with affection,
as the dance begins.
….Eve Powers
