Contemplative Haven

For a friend, a hard-working faith-filled loving husband and father of young children, travelling that often lonely path of a world-weary mystic.   

Hi everybody – I’m going to be taking some time off until August (with probably no Internet or email access), so I just wanted to let you know I’ll be turning off the comments until I get back.  I found this prayer in the Catholic Book of Prayers and wanted to share it here, because I think many of us can relate to its content:

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in memory.

Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations – of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book.

Slow me down, Lord.

 I’ll miss you all!  See you in August!

 [From:  The Call, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer]

“…I see and am with the fears that hook me into wanting things to be different from the way they are, fears that pull me into the belief that a different location or situation – a more creative job, a home in a more natural setting, more money or time or other resources, a relationship with someone who has the same “spiritual” goals or daily practice – is needed if I am ever to find deep abiding peace, if I am ever to learn how to love well.  These beliefs are rooted in deeper if intermittent fears:  the fear that I am not now and never will be able to hear the call at the center of my life accurately or fully enough to know how to consistently live who and what I am; the fear that the Beloved, tired of my inability to get it right, will simply stop calling, stop sending out the voice that can guide me home…

This is what I learned on my quest:
There is simply no place, no location or situation, that cannot be used to wake up to and live all of what and who you are, if you are willing to show up, to be present in the only place you ever have access to:  here.”
[pgs. 77-78]

“And you can’t trick the universe into giving you what you want by pretending to be at peace with how things are, by imitating what you think it would look like to be fully present where you are, all the while looking over your shoulder to see if some higher power has noticed and is about to deliver you from where you are and put you where you really want to be.”  (pg. 82)

Prayer to Our Lady of Fatima for Peace
“O Mary, Mother of God and Queen of Peace, you appeared to the children of Fatima at a time of great unrest and turmoil in the world. You asked then that the world pray for peace, so that the Reign of God may be known in every land.

Our world today continues to be mired in the vicious and fruitless cycle of hatred, violence and war. Your message of peace to the children of Fatima is needed as urgently today as it was when you first delivered it.

Grant us, Mary, that peace which is so much more than the mere absence of war. Grant us God’s peace, so that we might see every man and woman as a brother or a sister, as fellow creatures of the one God. Help us to build a world of justice, which is the only sure foundation of peace. And bring us all one day into the fullness of union with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in eternity. This we ask through Christ, your Son and our Lord, the Prince of Peace. Amen.”

Taken from:  Our Lady of Fatima, with Prayers and Devotions (from the Florentine Series of booklets on the Lives of the Saints)

“…the best reason for loving peace is not that war is horrible.  A nation that loves peace because war is degrading, disgusting, unpleasant, brutalizing, filthy, etc. will get in plenty of trouble.  No matter how horrible anything is there has to be a better reason, than its horribleness, for our hating it.”

[Sept. 5, 1941. "Run to the Mountain. The Journals of Thomas Merton. Volume I, 1939-1941]

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Dedicated to our Canadian troops in Afghanistan, and those who are serving elsewhere in the world.  May the Lord protect you:

Direct to YouTube for this video is here.

An excerpt from Caryll Houselander’s, “Lift Up Your Hearts”:

“The condition of peace is courage, but the moments in which we most long for it are those when courage seems most difficult.  When all that we want is to loosen our hold, to throw off responsibility, to rest.  We want not a sword, but a lap big enough to bury our head on.  It is comfort then to realise that the courage peace demands is in fact to relax, to throw all our care into the lap of God.  It means that we must take the risk of trusting God’s love, believing Christ’s word, loving one another…

So it is that peace on earth can be restored through the hearts of the unknown, humble people in all the countries of the world who open their hearts to the Lamb of God that in them the whole world’s peace may begin.

Advent is closing and the longing of the church for light and for the spring, the budding forth of the saviour, is culminating in the mystery of Christmas, and we can put aside our cares to make the house of our soul ready for the child, with prayer as simple as a folk song, rocking the cradle of peace to the beating of the human heart.”

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[Artwork is "A Little Girl Rocking a Cradle", by Nicolaes Maes, circa 1655]