Fr John Main OSB, “Religious Love,” THE WAY OF UNKNOWING (New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp. 115-116.
By opening our hearts to love at the deepest and most silent level of our being, we are not repressing human knowledge or rejecting human values or relationships. On the contrary, all of these are enlightened; that is, we see them in a new light, in a transcendent light. We see a new light in them. The extraordinary thing about the Christian message is that this light is not less than the light of Christ, the light who is Christ. The call to us to enter this light is for each of us to know from our own experience. . . .that Christ’s light shines in our hearts and that the first task of our life is to be open to it, to be bathed in it, to be made whole in it and so see with it. [. . . .] Meditation is our journey to that light.
After Meditation: Diane Ackerman, “School Prayer” in I PRAISE MY DESTROYER (New York: Vintage, 2000, Kindle edition), p.3.
In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
