Lilian Staveley

“ To the accomplished lover great and wonderful is prayer; the more completely the mind and heart are lifted up in it, the slower the wording. The greater the prayer, the shorter in words, though the longer the saying of it, for each syllable will needs be held up upon the soul before God, slowly and, as it were, in a casket of fire, and with marvellous joy. And there are prayers without words, and others without even thoughts, in which the soul in a great stillness passes up like an incense to the Most High. This is very pure, great love; wonderful, high bliss. ”

“ Since coming into this new way of living, the more I come into contact with music the more I sense a mysterious connection between melody—the soul—and her origin. Alone out of all the sciences and arts, music has no foundation upon anything on earth. There is no music in nature until the soul, come to a perfect harmony within herself, brings out the hidden harmony in all creation, and, turning it to melody within herself, returns it to her Lord in song, whether by outward instrument or inward love. ”

“ Now the mind must commence to fold itself, closing forwards as an open rose might close her petals to a bud again, for every thought and image must be laid away and nothing left but a great forward-moving love intention. Out glides the mind all smooth and swift, and plunges deep, then takes an upward curve and up and on till willingly it faints, the creature dies, and consciousness is taken over by the soul, which, quickly coming to the trysting-place, spreads herself and there awaits the revelations of her God. ”

“ The soul retaining her own individuality and consciousness to an intense degree, but imbued with and fused into a life of incredible intensity, which passes through the soul vitalities and emotions of a life so new, so vivid, so amazing, that she knows not whether she has been embraced by love or by fire, by joy or by anguish: for so fearful is her joy that she is almost unable to endure the might of it. ”

“ The summit is an indescribable contact, and this summit is not one summit but many summits. Which is to say, we have contact of several separate forms—that of giving, that of receiving, and that of immersion or absorption, which at its highest is altogether unendurable as fire.
Of this last I am able only to say this: that not only is it inexpressible by any words, but that that which is a state of extreme beatitude to the soul is death to the creature by excess of joy. Therefore both heart and mind fear to recall any details of the memory of this highest attainment. ”

“ The Spirit comes upon the soul in waves of terrible power. Now in a rapture God descends upon the soul, catching her suddenly up in a marvellous embrace: magnetising her, ravishing her. He is come, and He is gone. In an ecstasy the soul goes out prepared to meet Him, seeking Him by praise and prayer, pouring up her love towards Him; and He, condescending to her, fills her with unspeakable delights, and at rare times He will catch her from an ecstasy into a greater rapture. ”

“ It is better not to contend, either with others or against our own body. If we contend against anything we impress it the more firmly upon our consciousness. So if we would overcome the lusts of the body, let us do it not by harming or by contending against the body, which but emphasises its powers and importance, but let us rather proceed to ignore and make little of the body by forgetting it and passing out of it into higher things; and eventually we shall learn to live, not in the lower state, but in the joy of the soul. Why have a contempt for the body? ”

“ And as the lover, to sing to Him with never-failing joyful love and thanks.
But the learning and work of the soul is not so simple as that of the dog, who carries the message in writing upon his collar. The soul can have no written paper to assist her, and long and painful is her training; and exquisitely sweet it is when, having swiftly and accurately taken the message, she waits before Him for the rapture of those caresses that she knows so well. ”

“ He will be in a condition of giving love to God, or a condition of receiving love, of remembrance and attention. He will be in a condition of immeasurable glamour, an extraordinary illumination of every faculty, not by any act of his own, but poured through him until he is filled with the elixir of some new form of life, and feels himself before these experiences never to have lived—he but existed as a part of Nature. ”

“ And so equally of pain or joy—we do not feel these things delicately, as with, and in, the body, but we pass into the essence of these things themselves, in all their terrible and marvellous intensity, which is comparatively without limit.
Woe to those who must gather the garland of pain—which is remorse-after death! It is easier to suffer a whole lifetime in the body than one day in the spirit. O soul! ”

“ But now, although he is become more united to Nature than ever before, he also is mysteriously drawn apart from her, without being in any way presumptuous, he feels to be above her, not by any merits but by intention of Another. He is become lifted up into the spirit and essence of Nature, and the heavy and more obvious parts of her bind him no more. He is in a condition of freedom, he is frequently in a condition of great splendour, and is wrapped perpetually round about with that most glorious mantle—God-consciousness. ”

“ Do sinful men never suffer? Do the sinful escape disease? and live for ever without biting the dust in death or disappointment? Why, disease and suffering are the very twin-children of sin. I am amazed that people can take such a view of the Cross as to think it an unhappy, miserable way. For so marvellous is the beauty of such love that there is no other so desirable a thing upon earth.
"Come, walk the way with Me," says the Beloved; "I am all serenity, all peace, all might, all power, all love. ”

“ They are incomparable: beyond all imagination until we know them; and we receive them and perceive them and enjoy them as we have largeness and capacity to contain them. For there is no end. He has ever more to give if we will be but large enough to receive.
We are too absorbed in the puerile interests and occupations of daily life. We make of these endless occupations a virtue. They are no virtue, but a deadly hindrance, for they keep us too busy to look for the one thing needful—the Kingdom of God. What is this world? It is a schoolhouse for lovers, and we are lovers in the making. ”

“ We commence to experience profound and even terrible longings to leave the world and all creatures, for we cannot bear either the sight or the sound of them, and seek all day long to be alone with the Beloved God. To conquer this last selfishness and weakness of the soul, we must go again—as in the beginning—to Jesus. He teaches us to go to and fro willingly, gladly, from the highest to the lowest. To pick up our daily life and duties, our obligations to a physical world, in all humility, sweet reasonableness, and submission. ”

“ We know that the love of the heart can be beautiful and full of zeal and fervour; but the love of the soul by comparison to it is like a furnace, and the capacities of the heart are not worthy to be named in the same breath. Yet, deplorable as is the heart of man, it is evidently desired by God, and must be given to Him before He will waken the soul. To my belief, we are quite unable to awaken our own soul, though we are able to will to love God with the heart, and through this we pass up to the border of the Veil of Separation, where He will sting the soul into life and we have Perception. ”

“ This high, pure emotion, which is also an intense activity of the spirit, would seem so to etherealise the creature that instantly the delicate soul is able to escape her loosened bonds and flies towards her home, filled with ineffable, incomparable delight, praising, singing, and joying in her Lord and God until the body can endure no more, and swiftly she must return to bondage in it. ”

“ The entrance to the land of happiness and peace is through union of the will to Christ, by love. How can this sense of love be reached? By centring the wheel of the mind, with its daily spinning thoughts, upon the Man Jesus, and learning to inwardly see and hold on to the perfect simplicity and love of Jesus Christ. We can form the habit of taking Jesus as our heart and mind companion. We are all aware of the unceasing necessity of the mind to fill itself: we cannot have no thoughts until we have advanced in the spiritual life to a long distance. ”

“ The heat of Christ is mixed with indescribable sweetness: giving marvellous pleasure and refreshment and happiness, and wonderfully adapted to the delicacy of the human creature. The heat of the Godhead is very different, and sometimes we may even feel it to be cruel and remorseless in its very terrible and swift intensity. But the soul, like all great lovers, never flinches or hangs back, but passionately lends herself. If He chose to kill her with this joy she would gladly have it so. ”

“ How did the soul ever become so separated from God? To my feeling, in curiosity of loves we may find the answer, and know the "fall" to be not that of the animal man but of the soul, which, once living in perpetual beatitude—knowing nothing of pain because of the unity with God, not understanding or being even grateful for her bliss because of its invariable presence, and given free-will,—in curiosity went out in search of newer and yet newer loves. ”

“ Petty social interests and occupations, personal animosities, ambitions, worries, a revolving endless chaos of futilities, known and praised by too many of us as "a busy life"!—the mind being given opportunity only at long intervals, and usually at stated and set times, to dwell upon the thought of God, and the marvellous future of the human spirit. We are like travellers who, about to start out upon a great journey, pack their portmanteaus with everything that will be perfectly useless to them! ”

“ Truly, fair and holy love is our warranty, our only pass for entering into Heaven.
Brave and wilful, rapturous and insistent, love passes with bold yet humble ecstasy into the very presence of her Lord and God; and alone, out of all creation, is never denied the Right of Way. ”

“ The creature and soul are dead to world-life, as in a rapture or ecstasy; but the soul is not the bride, she is the child, and, full of eager and adoring intimacy, she flies into His ever-open arms, and never, never does she miss the way. ”

“ Some sought by study, by intelligence; some by strict and pious attention to outward ceremonial service; some by a "religious" life; some even by penance and fasting. Those who found sought with the heart. Those who sought with careful piety, or with intelligence, found perhaps faith and submission, but no joy. The Pearl is that which cannot be described in words. It is the touch of God Himself upon the soul, the Joy of Love. ”

“ They are the uttermost extremity of that which can be endured by the soul, at least until she has re-risen to great altitudes of holiness in ages to come.
By contact with God we acquire certain wonderful and terrible realisations of truth and knowledge. For one thing, we learn the nature and mode of spirit-life, as over against body- or sense-life. We learn, at first with great fear, something of the awful intensities of pain, as of joy, which can be endured by the spirit when free of the body: for when we are in the spirit we do not see fire, but we feel to become it and yet live! ”

“ The more I see of and talk with other people, the more I see how greatly changed I am. I am freed. They are bound. I find them bound by fears, by anxieties, by worries, by apprehensions of evil things, by sadness, by fears of death for their loved ones or for themselves. Now, we are freed of all these things if we keep to the Way, which is the Road of Love. This change we do not bring about for ourselves, and do not perhaps even realise that it can be effected. For myself, I seemed to be lifted into it, or into a capacity for it, on that day and in that moment in which I first loved God. ”

“ O foolish man! so timid of all future possibilities of bliss that he must grasp and burn himself with such delights as he finds here! And equally mistaken and small-minded man who thinks that all our Mighty God will have to offer us hereafter are crowns, damp clouds and mists, and endless hymns! Such little hearts are far away indeed from knowing the magnitudes of Life. ”

“ These are the topmost heights which the creature dare recall, though to the soul they remain in memory as life itself. The variations of these forms of contact are infinite, for God would seem to will to be both eternal changelessness and variation in infinitude.
Because of this, and the marvellous depths and heights and breadths of life revealed to her, the soul is able to conceive of an eternity of bliss, for monotony ceases to be joy. In Nature we see that no two trees in a forest are alike, and two fruits gathered from one bough have not the same flavour. ”

“ For perfect love knows agony, but no gloom. He went through all His agony, lifted high above gloom, in a great ecstasy of love for us.
To speak of sacrifice in connection with following Him is, to my mind, the work of a very foolish person and one in danger of being blasphemous. For how dare we say that it is a sacrifice when, by the putting away of foolish desires, we find God! And to find God, through the following of Jesus Christ, is to gain so much (even in this world, and without waiting for the next) that those who gain it never cease to be amazed at the vastness of it. ”

“ O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of life's former joys—for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! ”

“ The creature worships, but the soul alone knows contact. And yet the mode of contemplation is a far simpler thing than all these words—it is the very essence of simplicity itself; and in this sublime adventure we are really conscious of no mode nor plan nor flight, nought but the mighty need of spirit to Spirit and love to Love. ”

“ We may wonder how it is that the Mighty Maker of the Universe should choose to condescend to the mere individual piece of clay. It is incomprehensible. It is so incomprehensible that there is but one way of looking at it. This is no favouritism to the individual, but the evidence of a Mind with a vast plan pursuing a way and using a likely individual. These individuals or willing souls He takes and, setting them apart, fashions them to His own ends and liking. Of one He will make a worker, and of another He fashions to Himself a lover. ”