From P.A. Sheehan, Under the Cedars and the Stars, (1903):
All the saints have loved the night prayer. There is no hour so dear to them as the matin-hour, which is in the deepest darkness, as it precedes the dawn.”
From P.A. Sheehan, Under the Cedars and the Stars, (1903):
All the saints have loved the night prayer. There is no hour so dear to them as the matin-hour, which is in the deepest darkness, as it precedes the dawn.”
From George Bernard Shaw, The Christian Commonwealth, (October 14, 1908):
If art can reveal the truth, art can also lie. An artist can be not only divinely inspired, but diabolically inspired.”
1995
From Dr. Herbert Benson, M.D., Address, December 3, 1995, Spirituality and Healing Seminar" Sponsored by the Harvard Medical School:
(approximately)”We found that meditation leading to significant, observable metabolic changes could be reduced to two movements: 1)The repetition of a word, sound, prayer, thought, phrase or muscular activity; and 2) the passive return to repetition when other thoughts intrude.Every single cultrue of human kind with a recorded history had a prayer form that utilizes these two steps. Hinduism: The Upanishads of 7th-8th century BC said to achieve union with God, pay attention to your breathing and on each out breath utter a word or phrase from scripture, disregarding other thoughts. Same advice in the Vedas and the Bhahavagadvita. Should other thoughts come to mind, passively disregard them. Judaism: the Mercabilist cult of Judaism during the time of the second temple, 4th century B.C. to 1st century A.D.: rock back and forth, on each rock forward say the name of the magic Theal on the outbreath, disrgarding other thoughts.Christianity: Desert fathers in 3rd and 4th century, focus on breathing, as you exhale utter the name of Jesus as you feel the power of love. Disregard other thoughts as they arise. In the 14th century the Christian practice had evolved to include what we call today the Jesus prayer or the prayer of the heart: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”
14th Century Jewish Mysticism: Attend to breathing, breath out the elements of God’s name: Adonai. Islam: the practice of Dhikr, repeating a word call the “wird”: Allah or prayer such as there is but one God and his name is Allah. Shintoism, Taosim, Confucianism.Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, Wordsworth, Tennyson. RefMgr field[22]: 2″
From Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832; Scottish novelist and poet) The Lay of the Last Minstrel, (1805), canto 6 st. 1:
Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,/ Who never to himself hath said,/ This is my own, my native land!/ Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,/ As home his footsteps he hath turned/ From wandering on a foreign strand.
From St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-97), St. Theresa of Lisieux, Autobiography:
I have not the courage to search through books for beautiful prayers. . . . Unable either to say them all or choose between them, I do as a child would do who cannot read – I say just what I want to say to God, quite simply, and He never fails to understand.” RefMgr field[22]: 3″
From St. Teresa of Avila, St. Teresa of Avila, Autobiography, (1565):
Let him never cease from prayer who has once begun it, be his life ever so wicked; for prayer is the way to amend it, and without prayer such amendment will be much more difficult.”