Dear Friends ~ A lawyer, attempting to qualify who he ought to love as himself, asked Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?" After responding with the now well -known parable, Jesus asked in return -"Who acted like a neighbor?" I can still remember an incident at the end of a whole year of working to build community in my class of kindergartners. During field day, one boy refused to partner, even momentarily, with a girl who didn't look like him or play like him. He chose to sit out the game instead, sullenly muttering, "You don't get it. You think we're all friends but we're not." I told him I knew full well that they were not all friends; that was beside the point - the point was they needed to treat each other well whether they were friends or not. Despite being the most globally connected people in history, we seem paradoxically to be retreating into smaller and smaller social, ideological, and religious bubbles or "neighborhoods," insulating ourselves within the security of the people we can relate to. The first two people who came across the injured one in Jesus' parable crossed the road to keep their distance. How can we treat others as our neighbors as long as our identities and our differences keep us on the other side of the road?

In what sense can individual strands be torn from the one fabric of reality and be considered complete? My well-being will come only in relationship to our well-being and the well-being of all things. We are being invited to seek a new salvation. It will come through and with one another, not in separation from one another.

~ from Christ of the Celts by J. Philip Newell

We receive the light,
Then we impart it.
Thus we repair the world.

~ Kabbalah. Read more: The Way: Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment by Michael Berg

True communication is communion-- the realization of oneness, which is love.

~ Eckhart Tolle. Read more: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

It is not "forgive and forget" as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.

~ Alan Paton. Read more: Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Youth and Age

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Read More: Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

For Lost Friends

Bring warmth again to
Where the heart has frozen
In order that beyond the walls
Of our cherished hurt
And chosen distance
We may be able to
Celebrate the gifts they brought,
Learn and grow from the pain,
And Prosper into difference,
Wishing them the peace
Where spirit can summon
Beauty from wounded space.

~ from "For Lost Friends" by John O'Donohue. Read more: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O'Donohue

Did the two sides reach agreement... Doubtlessly not. Yet something more profound happened: They saw each other as people. This is an increasingly rare occurrence in our country; we have become skilled at avoiding practically all interaction with those with whom we disagree...we have the ingredients for a culture polarized by the perception that we are good and virtuous, while they are inhuman and evil. The law professor John A. Powell...calls this " othering" and has shown that it leads to hatred and discrimination. But on the odd occasion that people are exposed to each other as people...othering is hard to maintain. And that is the rare moment when human compassion and empathy can break out.

~ from "Empathize With Your Political Foe" by Arthur C. Brooks, THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 21, 2018

To say that it is not our fault does not relieve us of responsibility... we may not have polluted the air, but we need to take responsibility, along with others, for cleaning it up. Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am I perpetuating and reinforcing the negative messages so pervasive in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them?

~ Beverly Daniel Tatum. Read more: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules...I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests-even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done...

Reverence for creation comes fairly easily for most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge, especially if those people's lives happen to impinge upon your own...I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings...Particular human beings rarely do things the way I think they should do them, and when they prevent me from doing what I think I should be doing, then I can run short on reverence for them...

At its most basic level, the everyday practice of being with other people is the practice of loving the neighbor as the self. More intricately, it is the practice of coming face-to-face with another human being, preferably someone different enough to qualify as a capital "O" Other-and at least entertaining the possibility that this is one of the faces of God.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World

School Prayer

In the name of daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery
as a messenger of wonder
as an architect of peace.

~ from "School Prayer" by Diane Ackerman. Read more: I Praise My Destroyer: Poems by Diane Ackerman

Kindness softens and opens up the heart, as oil opens a rusty lock.

~ Elder Paision. Read more: The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios by Dionysios Farasiotis

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

~ Joseph Campbell. Read more: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) by Joseph Campbell

Singing the Trees: Chant, Nature and Soul, April 20-22, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat and Still Point.

Children of the Earth, May 4-6, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat.

Restorying the Heroine's Journey: Rising Rooted, with Julie Gabrielli, Lindsay McLaughlin, and Katy Gaughan, June 1-3, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat and Still Point.

Sound & Silence: Embodying Prayer through Sacred Rhythms of Drumming, Movement, Nature, and Silence, August 17-19, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat and Still Point.

Nature and Soul: With Jim Hall and Cheryl Hellner, September 14-16, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat.

Restorying: With Julie Gabrielli and Jim Hall, October 19-21, 2018 at Still Point.

The Gift of Story: A retreat for Adent and the Winter Solstice, November 30-December 2, 2018 at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat.

Or schedule your own Personal Retreat. Friends of Silence is devoted to nurturing those who reverence silence, prayer, contemplation, the Divine Guest, and the Oneness of all creation. Personal retreat can be a wonderful discipline for those seeking the life-giving empowerment that derives from the Silence. We have partnered with Still Point Mountain Retreat to be able to offer space for personal retreat for our members, whether you come as an individual, couple, family, or small group. We also manage and offer River House. The wilderness setting of both these retreat spaces provides the quiet and solitude necessary for the ideal personal retreat experience.

More Retreats