View all problems as challenges.  Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow.  Don’t run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence.  You have a problem?  Great.  More grist for the mill.  Rejoice, dive in and investigate.

                        Bhante Henepola Gunaratana from Mindfulness in Plain English

The Melted Heart

Lord, when my eye confronts my heart, and I realize that you have filled my heart with your love, I am breathless with amazement.  Once my heart was so small in its vision, so narrow in its compassion so weak in its zeal for truth.  Then you chose to enter my heart, and now in my heart I can see you, I can love all your people, and I have courage to proclaim the truth of your gospel to anyone and everyone.  Like wax before a fire, my heart has melted under the heat of your love.

                        Count Von Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian Church         

I, the blazing life of divine wisdom,
I set alight the beauty of the plains,
I radiate the waters,
I glow in the Sun and the Moon and the stars.

I beautify the Earth.

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that makes the fields laugh with the pleasure of life.

I call up tears, the perfume of holy work.
I am the yearning for good.

Let us be united;
Let us speak in harmony;
Let our minds apprehend alike.
Common be our prayer;
Common be the end of our assembly;
Common be our resolution;
Common be our deliberations.
Alike be our feelings;
Unified be our hearts;
Common be our intentions;
Perfect be our unity.

            Rig Veda

Verbum Bonum

Let us sound out the world pure and sweet,
That Ave, through which the virgin, a mother’s daughter,
Became the chamber of Christ.
That Ave, mother of the true Solomon, fleece of Gideon,
Whose childbirth the magi praised with three gifts.
Ave, you who bore Daylight;
Ave, you brought forth an offspring into a fallen world
You brought life and order.
Ave, bride of the highest Word,
Safe harbour from the sea
Sign in the thornbush
Source of fragrant incense, mistress of angels,
Amend us we plea
And amended, commend us to your son
That we might have eternal joy.

Codex Las Huelgas, 14^th c. tr. Mary H. Stewart

I began to discover that human maturity comes as we begin to bring our heads and hearts together.                                                Jean Vanier