Darkness

Do I continue on this path
Seeking meaning and purpose
In these cul-de-sacs of sameness
Going round and round?

Is there opportunity here
To find a difference
A challenge to repair
What is broken?

Where is the freshness
The energy for life
That renews strength
For the next one?

(c) 2012 Ronald Friesen

Inner communication

And the deepest level of communication is not

communication, but communion.

It is wordless.

It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech,

and it is beyond concept.

Not that we discover a new unity.

We discover an older unity.

My dear brothers, we are already one.

But we imagine that we are not.

And what we have to recover is our original unity.

What we have to be is what we are.

Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal

Merton on The life of contemplation

The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and
inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction.
One is content with what is.

Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William H. Shannon,
editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003): 66

Hearing God's voice

How do I hear your voice, God?

Do I hear it as still small voice?
Or
Do I hear it as a thunder clap?
Or
Do I hear it in a whipperwill's call?
Or
Do I hear it in a child's cry"
Or
Do I hear in the cry of a woman being raped?
Or
Do I hear in the wailing of a woman whose son was cut down in gang violence?
Or
Do I hear it in the screams of a woman who pleads for her husband to stop beating her?
Or
Do I hear it in the cries of a father who searches a garbage dump for scraps of food for his family?

I often hear your voice, God
I confess I often ignore your voice.
Help me to hear better, O God

(c) 2012 Ronald Friesen