I received this in an email today and thought I would pass it along:

Heal your Heart

by Tim Brieske, M.D.

As far as we know, human beings are the only life forms on the planet with conscious awareness - the ability to know that we know and to be aware that we are aware. We're able to perceive both our inner and outer environments and we can make conscious choices about where we direct one of our most valuable gifts: our attention.As many great wisdom traditions teach, whatever we put our attention on expands in our experience. We can focus on grievances, shortcomings, and pain, and those qualities will grow in importance to us. Or we can instead choose to shift our attention to beauty, love, and laughter, and we will perceive their expansion in our life.

When I'm practicing medicine, I realize a feeling of love as I relate to those seeking care. I find that as I direct my attention and shift my perception towards love and connection, the layers of my mind, intellect, and ego become less rigid, more elastic, and relatively transparent. This has the effect of allowing the love and spiritual energy we all possess to be communicated in a more authentic, less refracted way.

Hagia Sophia - Written in 1963 by Thomas Merton

I. Dawn. The Hour of Lauds.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a 
dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-
ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,
the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all
things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence 
that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-
less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen 
roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, 
saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at 
once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of
my Creator's Thought and Art within me, speaking 
as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this, 
my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine 
fecundity.

Let us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.
I am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second,
the Feast of Our Lady's Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very 
quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my 
dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the 
dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the
world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the 
separate selves that ever were separate and isolated 
and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds 
coming back together into awareness from all distractions,
cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like 
the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice 
of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last 
Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from
death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at 
the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out 
of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of 
sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be 
gentleness.

It is like being awakened by Eve. It is like being 
awakened by the Blessed Virgin. It is like coming 
forth from primordial nothingness and standing in 
clarity, in Paradise.

In the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all 
life, the touch of Spirit.

Thus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia
clamitat in plateis) and she cries out particularly 
to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.

Who is more little, who is more poor than the helpless 
man who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and 
without defense? Who is more trusting than 
he who must entrust himself each night to sleep?
What is the reward of his trust? Gentleness comes to 
him when he is most helpless and awakens him, 
refreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him
by the hand, and opens to him the doors of another 
life, another day.

(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself 
in sickness, planned for himself, guarded himself, loved 
himself alone and watched over his own life all night, is 
killed at last by exhaustion. For him there is no newness. 
Everything is stale and old.)

When the helpless one awakens strong as the voice of 
mercy, it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin, 
(his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made wise
by God's Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and 
invite him with unutterable sweetness to be awake and to 
live. This is what it means to recognize Hagia Sophia.

II. Early Morning. The Hour of Prime.

O blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!

We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the 
merciful and feminine.

We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance, 
or non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers. 
Yet she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His 
simplicity.

We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows
down the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy 
earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all 
the people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for 
though they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner. 
Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply that 
she does not understand imprisonment.

The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the 
gentle one will awake: Sophia.

All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him
on all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he
will never be the same again. He will have awakened 
not to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable 
pure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all:
one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.

The stars rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of 
the Sun. The heavenly lights rejoice in the going
forth of one man to make a new world in the morning, 
because he has come out of the confused primordial dark 
night into consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence 
of Sophia in his own heart. He has become eternal.

III. High Morning. The Hour of Tierce.

The Sun burns in the sky like the Face of God, but 
we do not know his countenance as terrible. His light 
is diffused in the air and the light of God is diffused 
by Hagia Sophia.

We do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness. 
He speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in
which His light is one fullness and one Wisdom.
Thus He shines not on them but from within them.
Such is the loving-kindness of Wisdom.

All the perfections of created things are also in God;
and therefore He is at once Father and Mother. As 
Father He stands in solitary might surrounded by 
darkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing 
all His creatures with merciful tenderness and light. 
The Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia Sophia. 
We call her His "glory." In Sophia His power is 
experienced only as mercy and as love.

(When the recluses of fourteenth-century England
heard their Church Bells and looked out upon the 
wolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their
hearts to "Jesus our Mother." It was Sophia that had 
awakened in their childlike hearts.)

Perhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is
the unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia. Perhaps
she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest, 
not even waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know. 
Out of the silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see
it until it is spoken.

In the Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was 
the Light. We have not seen this Beginning. I do not know 
where she is, in this Beginning. I do not speak of her as a 
Beginning, but as a manifestation.

Now the Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching
from "end to end mightily." She wills to be also 
the unseen pivot of all nature, the center and significance 
of all the light that is in all and for all. That which is poorest
and humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is 
nevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it 
is their own self that stands before us, naked and without care.

Sophia, the feminine child, is playing in the world,
obvious and unseen, playing at all times before the Creator. 
Her delights are to be with the children of men. She is their sister.
The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness, mercy, virginity 
the Light, the Life considered as passive, as received, as given, as 
taken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift of God. Sophia is
Gift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is God-given and God 
Himself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to Nothing: 
inexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit semetipsum. Humility as
the source of unfailing light.

Hagia Sophia in all things is the Divine Light reflected in them,
considered as a spontaneous participation, as their invitation 
to the Wedding Feast.

Sophia is God's sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing,
and the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.

She is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her 
they prosper. In her they glorigy God. In her they rejoice to reflect 
Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them. 
She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as 
thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.

Because she receives perfectly there is in her no stain.
She is love without blemish, and gratitude without 
self-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves
and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the 
Feast and the Wedding.

The feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source 
of creative realizations of the Father's glory. She is His 
manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen,
glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who 
know her at all.

Sophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness 
with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon 
turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace. 
She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would 
almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us 
a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being
in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from
brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She 
is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice
and creative dynamism of the Father.

IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina.

Now the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being 
who enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia. 
Because of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation
of Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather than Person.

Natura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura
is as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura
is all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person:
not a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly 
Redeemed, the fruit of all God's great power, the perfect expression
of wisdom in mercy.

It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness
of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown
which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created
nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.

God enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient
understanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters 
without publicity into the city of rapacious men.

She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with
what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than
glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth
as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible
mercy, to die for us on the Cross.

The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute
wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A 
homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without 
identifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and 
entrusts Himself to sleep.

In Search of the Beloved
"Seek and you will find"

Welcome to Beloved Ministry! 
You are loved! Be loved!!!  "You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you" (Isaiah 43:4).

"You are a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your consciousness shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My delight is in her, and your consciousness Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your consciousness shall be married,...as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so does God rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:3-5).

"Come to me all who are broken-hearted, weary, or burdened and I will give you rest. Learn from me for I am gentle and you will find rest for your soul" (Matthew 11:28-29).

"You shall weep no more. She will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when the Beloved hears it, he will answer you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes will see your Teacher. And your ears will hear a word behind you saying, 'This is the way, walk in it'...the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the hurt of his people and heals the wounds" (Isaiah 30:19-26).

"Arise, shine; for your light has come...the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you...lift up your eyes round about and see...you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you" (Isaiah 60:1-5).

"Get wisdom, get insight. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you...she will exalt, honor and place a fair garland on your head; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown" (Proverbs 4:5-9).

"Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the issues of life and the springs of life...be attentive to my words; keep them within your heart. For they are life to her who finds them, and healing to all her flesh" (Proverbs 4:20-23).

Wisdom says: "I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me" (Proverbs 8:17).

"Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the lamb" (Revelation 21:9).

"Return to me and I will return to you" (Malachi 3:7).

"Draw near to me and I will draw near to you" (James 4:8).

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12).

"The aim of my ministry is LOVE that issues from a pure heart" (1 Timothy 1:5).

"For you who are in awe and wonder of my name, Holy Wisdom, Holy Spirit, the alive Presence within the body, the Sun shall rise with healing in Her wings" (Malachi 4:2).

This says it all in words blazing with the light, fire, living water, love, and life of the Holy Spirit. Let the light penetrate your heart and bring you peace.