"In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistence of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget ... But Sabbath is not only resistance. It is alternative. It is an alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising and its great liturgical claim of professional sports that devour all our 'rest time.' The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God."
~Walter Brueggemann
... from the preface/back cover
Silence is not just that which is around words and underneath images and events. It has a life of its own. It's a phenomenon with almost a physical identity. It is a being in itself to which you can relate. Philosophically, we would say being is that foundational quality which precedes all other attributes. When you relate to the naked being of a think, you learn to know it at its core. Silence is somehow at the very foundation of all reality. It is that out of which all being comes and to which all things return.
~Richard Rohr
... from Chapter One
The Mystic's quote in my back pocket as I wander and wonder in nature will be ...
Love your fellow beings—for they are all tabernacles of God.
~Mechthild of Magdeburg
As I become a breathing prayer in the silence ...
Breathing out ... Let
your Presence wrap me in Stillness
“Be
still, and know that I am God!" Psalm 46:10
Amen ...
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