Brother Richard

being with the ebb and flow of the breath, being with the in-breath and the out-breath, trusting in the flow of breath that is always present as the background music of our life.

Gently now,

We follow that breath to the very center of our being, to a place of perfect peace, light, warmth, calm, healing.

Resting in the awareness of ourself,

as a human being, as a center of consciousness and will, as an embodied reality, held in being by divine love, drawn forth into existence from love, by love, through love,

we begin to recognize that our fundamental identity is that of beloved.

Our existence itself, proof of love.

created in a deliberate act of divine choosing.

A choice manifested in love.

And so we rest in the idea of love as the fundamental quality of our nature.

And we know that this belovedness depends on nothing that we can do or say or be.

There is nothing to be proven.

There is nothing we could do to be less loved.

We are simply beloved.

Beloved.

Beloved.

And gently drawing our awareness from this truth

to the circle of relationships that we live within.

We can begin with those that we would characterize as beloved by us.

And if faces or names begin to appear,