Saturday, July 9, 2011

Saturday--alive through love

"In my vision I saw something small. No bigger than a hazelnut, it lay in the palm of my hand, round as a ball. Looking at it with the eye of my understanding, I wondered, 'What is that?' I was given to understand it is everything in creation. That this minute thing lasted at all amazed me. It was so tiny, it looked like it would suddenly vanish into nothing.
"Concerning this tiny, hazelnut-sized cosmos, I received this answer in my soul, 'It lasts and always will because God loves it.' I saw then that everything's alive through God's love. The little thing I saw that seemed like it could vanish into nothingness because of its insubstantiality, this little thing is why our hearts and souls don't know perfect peace.
"We seek rest here in this very little thing, in which there is no rest, and we don't know our God, who is almighty, all wise, and all good--God is the only true Rest. That's why no soul is at rest until it scorns as nothing all created things.
"When the soul becomes the nothing God wants the soul to be--for love--when it wants instead to possess the Lord, who is everything, then it can accept spiritual rest"

~Julian of Norwich, Revelations~

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm so restless in spirit, I must have needed to read this. Thank you.

Dorcas (aka SingingOwl) said...

I was just about to post the same thing as Songbird. Feeling so unsettled and restless.... :-( Thanks for posting. I'm going to come back and read it more than once.

Teri said...

totally unintentionally, this is sort of where my meditation on seeds ended up--that we can't grow until we let ourselves rest/die in the soil, connected to the source of nourishment.

apparently I too needed to hear this today!

Terri said...

Julian of Nowich wrote such beautiful powerful prayers.

Terri said...

Julian of Nowich wrote such beautiful powerful prayers.