Minute Meditation – Our Hearts Listen and Respond

To have a place of solitude is an inestimable gift. It makes it easy to let the heart expand, to let the senses wake up, one by one, to come alive with fresh vitality. Yet, whatever our circumstances, we need to somehow set aside a time and a place for this kind of experience. We tend to overlook the close connection between responsiveness and responsibility, between sensuousness and social challenge. Outside and inside are of one piece. As we learn to really look with our eyes, we begin to look with our heart also. We begin to face what we might prefer to overlook, begin to see what is going on in this world of ours. As we learn to listen with our ears, our heart begins to hear the cry of the oppressed. 

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast

//Franciscan Media//


Minute Meditation – Our Heart is a Sensitive Receiver

Our heart is a highly sensitive receiver; it can listen through all our senses. Whatever we hear, but also whatever we see, taste, touch, or smell, vibrates deep down with God’s song. To resonate with this song in gratefulness is what I call singing back. This attitude of prayer has given great joy to all my senses and to my heart. A completely different inner world of prayer where I also feel at home is one to which silence opens the door—silence, not only as perceived by the ears, but also a quietness of the heart, a lucid stillness inside, like the stillness of a windless midwinter day.

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast