The Foundation of All Virtues

Human love is given to illuminate by its sincerity the heart of another, there is no greater power to inspire than the power of love.
The desire for service, gentleness, tolerance, kindness, forgiveness, all come from love.
Love alone is a fountain from which all virtues fall as drops of sparkling water.
Love is given to inspire divine love in the heart of man, and all the beauty that man sees on earth is beauty created by the power of love, and by the power of love he learns to recognize it as a reflection of the beauty of heaven.
Thus may earth become heaven, and heaven and earth one single vision of the glory of God.

Love alone is the fountain from which all virtues

fall as drops of sparkling water.

A Virtuous Life

St. Thomas says [I-II, Q.34,a.4) that a man is good when his will takes joy in what is good, evil when his will takes joy in what is evil.
He is virtuous when he finds happiness in a virtuous life, sinful when he takes pleasure in a sinful life.
Hence the things that we love tell us what we are.
A man is known, then, by his end.
He is also known by his beginning.
And if you wish to know him as he is at any given moment, find how far he is from his beginning and how near to his end.
-- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

The good man comes from God and returns to Him.
He starts with the gift of being and with the capacities God has given him.
He reaches the age of reason and begins to make choices.
-- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Prayer Is The Greatest Virtue

Prayer is the greatest virtue,
the only way of being free from all sin.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

The first aspect of prayer is giving thanks to God for all the numberless blessings that are bestowed upon us at every moment of the day and night, and of which we are mostly unconscious.

The second aspect of prayer is laying our shortcomings before the unlimited perfection of the divine Being, and asking His forgiveness. This makes man conscious of his smallness, of his limitation, and therefore makes him humble before his God...

There are many virtues, but there is one principal virtue. Every moment passed outside the presence of God is sin, and every moment in His presence is virtue. The whole object of the Sufi, after learning this way of communicating is to arrive at a stage where every moment of our life passes in communion with God, and where our every action is done as if God were before us. Is that within everyone's reach? We are meant to be so. Just think of a person who is in love: when he eats or drinks, whatever he does, the image of the beloved is there. In the same way, when the love of God has come, it is natural to think of God in everything we do.

Prayer is a great virtue and is the only way of being free from all sin. In prayer a man reaches the Spirit of God which is all-powerful and ever-forgiving; and the power of prayer opens the doors of the heart in which God, the All-Merciful resides.

There are many different feelings which have their influence upon men, and give joy and exaltation; but there is none greater and more exalting than that of offering our faults and weaknesses before God and asking His pardon with true repentance and humility. No ethics, no philosophy, can give greater joy than this, which is sincere devotion to God; and the deepest joy is his who knows best how to humble himself before God. The proud man, ignorant of greatness of God, and of His all-sufficient power, does not know this exaltation, which raises the soul from earth to Heaven.

By Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

. . . Shipwrecked In South Carolina . . .

Virtue And Vice

Virtue and vice both spring from small beginnings.
So start small: virtue is a fruitful tree that grows from little roots to feed and strengthen all those around us, as we have been feed and strengthened by others.

God in his power is refuge and strength;

God in his mercy is the river that refreshes the soul;

God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles

and gathers us into his place.

Elder's Meditation -- A Hollow Bone

In order for us to use our power well, we must become a hollow bone.
We must prepare ourselves to become a channel.
Our channel must be clean before we can use our power well.
We must be free of resentments, guilt, shame, anger, self pity and fear.
If these things are in us, we cannot be hollow bones.
These things block us from our power.
The cleaner we are, the more power we move.
We must become a hollow bone so the Creator can use us to do what he wants us to do.

My Creator, remove from me today

all resentment, anger, fear, guilt and selfishness.

Do not let my weaknesses stand

in the way of my usefulness to You.

Make me a hollow bone so

Your power can flow through me.

A Courageous Life

"Have courage," we often say to one another.
Courage is a spiritual virtue.
The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means "heart.
A courageous act is an act coming from the heart.
A courageous word is a word arising from the heart.
The heart, however, is not just the place where our emotions are located.
The heart is the centre of our being, the centre of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions.
When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop.
When we say, "Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met," we call people together and make our lives into lives for others.
The word brings us together and calls us into community.
When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.

-- Henri Nouwen