The world is greater than the burden it bears.

"The Great Silence", from Neither Use Nor Ornament

"The world is greater than the burden it bears, and life is more than the sum total of its grey days.  The golden threads of reality are already shining through; if we look we can see them everywhere.  Let us never forget this; we must be our own comforters. … 

"The air still vibrates with the noise of violence and destruction.  But silently the eternal values are gathering on the horizon.  They are like the first pale rays of light as the promise of radiant fulfillment creeps upward accompanied by the first tentative notes of jubilation.  It is not yet a full chorus but only an indication, a hint, far away.  But it is drawing nearer."  (p. 27)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

they became tremendous silence

The full beauty of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), seen in a detailed view from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), showing a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky -- that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun's mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible. 

(NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and she saw that, in containing Him, she contained the world besides. 

The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and the end of all things came before her in her deepest heart. 

And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm Mary slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence. 

And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence. 

-- Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1951, p 317)

listen, keep watch

Fr. Alfred Delp S.J.

" … We have to listen, to keep watch, to let our hearts quicken under the impulse of the indwelling Spirit.  Only in this quiescent state can the true blessing of Advent be experienced and then we shall also recognize it in other ways.  Once awakened to an inner awareness we are constantly surprised by symbols bearing the Advent message, figures of tried and proved personalities that bring out in a most forceful way the inner meaning of the feast and emphasize its blessing. 

"I am thinking of three in particular -- the man crying in the wilderness, the herald angel, and our blessed Lady."

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, p.22. 1963 Herder and Herder New York

See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

I, Solitude

Titan moon haze

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!
I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.
WHen I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit
(Thou word and animal)
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon!
I am the appointed hour, 
The "now" that cuts
Time like a blade.
I am the unexpected flash
Beyond "yes," beyond "no,"
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers:

For I, Solitude, am thine own self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All,
I, Silence, am thy Amen!

-Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, pp. 340-341 

listen to the living walls

The star HD 44179 is surrounded by an extraordinary structure known as the Red Rectangle. It acquired its moniker because of its shape and its apparent color when seen in early images from Earth. This strikingly detailed Hubble image reveals how, when seen from space, the nebula, rather than being rectangular, is shaped like an X with additional complex structures of spaced lines of glowing gas, a little like the rungs of a ladder. The star at the center is similar to the Sun, but at the end of its lifetime, pumping out gas and other material to make the nebula, and giving it the distinctive shape. It also appears that the star is a close binary that is surrounded by a dense torus of dust -- both of which may help to explain the very curious shape. The Red Rectangle is an unusual example of what is known as a proto-planetary nebula. These are old stars, on their way to becoming planetary nebulae. Once the expulsion of mass is complete a very hot white dwarf star will remain and its brilliant ultraviolet radiation will cause the surrounding gas to glow.

The Red Rectangle is found about 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn). (ESA/Hubble and NASA)

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet).  Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of 
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

"I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult.  The whole
World is secretly on fire.  The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning?  How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?

- Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, pp. 280-281

happy birthday lax

Birthday of Robert Lax - November 30

the important thing for a drummer or dancer, for example (singer too), is to get to the very center of the rhythm, center of the beat << the nerve >>
~~~
to find that first: to start from it as a base, and from it all other things, even very elaborate things, develop.
~~~
the captains i like, & the people in general are those who seem to have found that center; it is not that they are either << good >> or << bad >> it is rather that they are fully alive, fully themselves, & that they, again the << best >> of them, seem to have gone through a baptism (of not just water: of fire as well) from which there is no turning back.
Robert Lax, Journal C, p. 38
from S.T. Georgiou's book, "In the Beginning was Love - Contemplative Words of Robert Lax”, #34 pp. 61-62

The River

“Love enables us to see things which those who are without love cannot see. Who will be gone and who will stay? Where do we come from and where shall we go? Are the other shore and this shore one or two? Is there a river that separates the two sides, a river which no boat can cross? Is such an absurdly complete separation possible? Please come over to my boat. I will show you that there is a river, but there is no separation. Do not hesitate: I will row the boat myself. You can join me in rowing, too, but let us row slowly, and very, very quietly.”

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

from the introduction to his play, “The Path of Return Continues the Journey"