When our pups were new and quite young, I asked them what sounded good for the meditation meeting I was going to lead the next day. Cosmo and Wanda like this one. (Of course there’s a whole shelf full of books they could literally sink their teeth into—and would, given the chance—along with the shelf, rug, table, chairs…)

From the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, in Discernment of Stirrings, is the following:

For silence is not God, nor speaking; fasting is not God, nor eating; solitude is not God, nor company; nor any other pair of opposites. God is hidden between them, and cannot be found by anything your soul does, but only by the love of your heart. God cannot be known by reason, and cannot be thought, caught, or sought by understanding. But God can be loved and chosen by the true, loving will of your heart.

. . . If God is your love and your purpose, the chief aim of your heart, it is all you need in this life, although you never see more with the eye of reason your whole life long. Such a blind shot with the sharp dart of longing love will never miss its mark, which is God.

After a shared moment of silence and meditation, I remembered this little piece from the Bhagavad Gita (11.53-55):

Not by study of the Scriptures, nor by an ascetic or disciplined life, nor through gift-giving, nor through ritual offerings can I be seen in such a way as you have seen me [i.e., directly within].

Only by undistracted love can one see me, and know me, and enter into me.

One who does my work, who loves me, who sees me as the highest, free from attachment to all things, and with love for all creation, and in truth comes to me.