Freedom

"'God is a God who is committed to our development. He is committed to journeying and isn’t afraid where that might take us... That when Jesus talks about freedom, he is talking about a God who believes we are capable to live out of that very freedom. This is an empowering God who encourages us and pushes us beyond the ‘Gardens’ of our... own making.'

~George Elerick in "The Progressive Christian Alliance" discussing the Adam & Eve myth

Our greatest problem with holiness

In the final analysis our greatest problem with holiness is not
that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are
rebellious. We are selfish, that's our problem. And the fact that
we often won't admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes.
- Floyd McClung

So what to do?

So what to do? Two things, it seems to me. At least two. Use up
each day. Fill it overflowing with good. Deliberately enjoy it.
Two, begin now. Mend a fractured friendship, mail an overdue
letter, repair a broken heart, lay aside a grievance, act on a
noble impulse. As we all know, "The night cometh."
- Lanny Henninger

Death

"Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that "I" cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it."

~Alan Watts

And the point is to live everything.

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

The will is that which has all power

The will is that which has all power; ... it makes heaven and it
makes hell: for there is no hell but where the will of the creature
is turned from God; nor any heaven but where the will of the
creature worketh with God.
... William Law (1686-1761), "The Way to Divine Knowledge"

What It Takes

"When you proclaim imminence alone you limit God. When you assert devotion alone you confine Him. But whem you maintain both side by side, you follow the right path and gain both inner merit and command of gnosis."

~Ibn 'Arabi

The Moon of Your Love

Not a single soul
lacks a pathway to you.

There's no stone,
no flower--
not a single piece of straw--
lacking your existence.

In every particle of the world,
the moon of your love
causes the heart
of each atom to glow.

--Muhammad Shirin Maghribi
(student of Ibn al' Arabi)

From the Poetry Chaikhana

Clarity

"confusion and doubt

can fill my heart so easily.

until I close my eyes and think

of my love for you.

clarity and courage come into focus -

and I wait for your return"

~terri st. cloud

Extraordinary experiences in meditation

Above all, it is not necessary that we should have any unexpected,
extraordinary experiences in meditation. This can happen, but if it
does not, it is not a sign that the meditation period has been
useless. Not only at the beginning, but repeatedly, there will be
times when we feel a great spiritual dryness and apathy, an
aversion, even an inability to meditate. We dare not be balked by
such experiences. Above all, we must not allow them to keep us from
adhering to our meditation period with great patience and fidelity.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), In "Life Together"

Our willed imitation

Our imitation of God in this life--that is, our willed imitation, as
distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our
natures or our states--must be an imitation of God Incarnate: our
model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the
roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the
lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so
strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in
itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life
operating under human conditions.
- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), "The Four Loves"