by Kent Smith 

In an episode of his podcast Turning to the Mystics, clinical psychologist James Finley describes his first encounter with Thomas Merton:  

​“I told him about my desire for God. Then he told me, ‘Once in a while, you’ll find somebody to talk to about this, but they are hard to find. The purpose of this place is, it is a place meant to protect, to preserve, and cultivate this radical desire, as a charism in the world.’ And then he offered me guidance in my own prayer.”

Source: Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation (Meditation@cac.org), “Lost in the Secret of God’s Face” (September 1, 2021). 

At the heart of the Contemplative Center of Silicon Valley is our passion to provide a welcoming place that protects, preserves, and cultivates our desire for God.

―Kent Smith, Spiritual Director and Discernment Board Member at CCSV 

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by Atum O'Kane

I need community.
You need community.
We are a part of God's body.
Thank you for making this journey with me.
Thank you for sharing your gifts, your being, your soul story, and your life.

We are a part of God's heart.
I hold you in love, respect, compassion, and appreciation.
May your soul unfold with grace and accommodation.

We are all a part of God's body.
May your heart know the beauty of love and the support of soul friends as you go forth.

Peace be with you.
We are all a part of the soul of humanity.

―Atum O'Kane, Teaching on the gift of community and a prayer of completion

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A poem from Rumi:
​
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want. 
Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill 
          where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

~

A BOOK of LIFE and DEATH and Life
sparrow

JAN RICHARDSON

"I've been thinking about memory the past few weeks. It began with a quote that came my way from Oliver Sacks:  We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection. Evidently that landed somewhere in my subconscious, because sometime during the following week, during my prayer time in the front studio one night, the quote came to the surface. It got me pondering in a new way what it is that remembering does and how it's part of my journey in grieving."

"Specifically, I've been thinking about memory as a creative act, that perhaps in the disassembling and the reassembling Sacks talks about, memory is generative. It's not just pondering and piecing together what happened in the past but also creating something for the future."

"I find myself with the sense that in remembering you, your story, our life together, something new is being created, something that has a tangible element to it--that it has structure, that it is a shelter, a new home between the worlds (page 151)."

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