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"Each one of us work out his own destiny in inseparable union with all those others with whom God has willed us to live. We share with one another the creative work of living in the world. And it is through our struggle with material reality, with nature, that we help one another create at the same time our own destiny and a new world for our descendants. This work of man, which is his peculiar and inescapable vocation, is a prolongation of the creative work of God Himself. Failure to measure up to this challenge and to meet this creative responsibility is to fail in that response to life which is required of us by the will of our Father and Creator."

Thomas Merton. Love and Living. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart, editors. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979: 159.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety —

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light —
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

"The anguished questioning of the world is stilled in my garden; it is invited there for healing. Who knows what resonances a pocket of beauty, peace and silence may have for the future of our race? There is little I can do but live carefully and offer hospitality to pain, and in that hospitality is, perhaps, a seed of hope.

There are other gardens here, far lovelier than mine, set in the context of the wild garden that is the Alaska wilderness. Its stillness, its hospitality for pain, must also be preserved, for in wilderness pain is taken from us and transfigured;^[1] in wilderness is the preservation of the world.^[2] We must keep some of it, at least, from exploitation, lest we lose our souls."

[1] Erazim Kohák in The Embers and the Stars.
[2] Eliot Porter in his book by the same title.

From "Voice in the Wilderness" by Maggie Ross.
Read more here.

"The message of God's mercy to man must be preached. The word of truth must be proclaimed. No one can deny this. But there are not a few who are beginning to feel the futility of adding more words to the constant flood of language that pours meaninglessly over everybody, everywhere, from morning to night. For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence."

Thomas Merton. Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1965): 195.

"Spirituality is thus for the hatching of the heart. Whatever helps to open our hearts to the reality of the sacred is what we should be engaged in. This awareness leads to an image of the Christian life very different from the one with which I grew up. The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to God who is already here."
— The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith by Marcus Borg

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and "one body," will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another's achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my own integration in Christ.

Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955): 16

"... understand that your life lies in the not knowing as well as the knowing; that your life lies in understanding your limits; that your life lies in a letting-go which allows love, reconciliation and promise and which, if you believe it aligns you with precisely that energy of creative gift which sustains the entire universe." From "What Difference Does it Make: The Gospel in Contemporary Culture" by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.
Read it all here.

…laughter enables us to live in a highly structured world without falling prey to the manacles of the mind that blind our eyes and cement our hearts. Laughter gives us the freedom of the Jesus who foolishly questioned the authority of the state and smilingly stretched the imagination of the church. “The poor shall inherit the Kingdom,” he laughed. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman,” he smiled. “God is a daddy,” he chuckled. He danced from town to town, healing, making people smile with new hope, bringing invitations to people in trees and light-footedness to lepers. He invited guests to eat with him when he had no food. He taught babies and poked fun at Pharisees and told winsome little stories, spiritual jokes, about women who would not let pretentious judges alone. Day after day he smiled his way from one theological absolute to another and left the world with enough to smile about till the end of time.

—by Joan Chittister from There Is A Season (Orbis)

Why Words Matter:
Poetry & Faith with Dana Gioia
from Washington National Cathedral

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou - Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
~Emily Bronte

"Seeking God is not just an operation of the intellect, or even a contemplative illumination of the mind. We seek God by striving to surrender ourselves to Him whom we do not see, but Who is in all things and through all things and above all things." From Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950): 223-224.

"I am convinced that the Voice that whispered us into being still whispers within us and all creation. I am dead certain of it sometimes, terrified of it at other times, longing for it at all times. The silence that so often seems to overcome me is more likely a matter of my not trusting my own ears than it is a matter of the Voice having gone suddenly, inexplicably silent."

From Between The Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God by Robert Benson

By Mary Oliver, from The Leaf and the Cloud

"And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces, but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."
— Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in The ABC's of Faith
Read more about Frederick Buechner here.

"When a society is organized around that which is fitting in each realm,
then peace, the fruit of justice, can flourish."
Leonardo Boff in The Prayer of Saint Francis:
A Message of Peace for the World Today

Watch/hear a playlist of "Gratitude Songs" from Spirituality & Health: go to http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/
then scroll down and click on "Gratitude Songs."

Faith Formation & Education from Trinity Church: Hildegard of Bingen

"To have an attitude of faith is to hear the Lord speaking everywhere and all the time, in the
concrete and ordinary circumstances of our lives." From Richard Rohr, in
"Radical Grace, Daily Meditations."