"Quiet, please. Monks the word."

"Quiet, please. Monks the word."

I just returned from a weekend of silence among the Trappist monks at the monastery of Abbey at Gesthemani in Trappist, Kentucky. It was an item on my ‘bucket list.’ The unfamiliar path that opened before me, as Robert Frost so aptly stated, has made all the difference. It began even before I arrived, having found the card Lynn had hidden with the following:


“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16

It felt intrusive injecting myself into the personal silence and stories of those who walked these holy grounds before me. Still, I leaned into the anticipation of whispers I might discern through reading, reflection and prayer; the melodies of the solitary. I offer two quotes, some images of my walk in solitude and my heartfelt wish for you to take the time…to find the time…to visit the silence…to surrender into its arms.

"Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? When there is no radio to listen to, no TV to watch, no book to read, no person to talk to, no project to finish, no phone call to make, how does that make you feel? Often it does no more than make us so aware of how much there still is to do that we haven't yet done that we decide to leave the fearful silence and go back to work! It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover the small intimate voice saying: 'You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests.' Still, if we dare to embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know that voice. I do not want to suggest to you that one day you will hear that voice with your bodily ears. I am not speaking about a hallucinatory voice, but about a voice that can be heard by the ear of faith, the ear of the inner heart." Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen

How can I hear with different ears and see with different eyes?

"A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be a solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude. But if one is not called to a solitary life, the more he is alone the more will he worry about living and forget to live. When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation - thought and life are one." Thoughts in Silence, Thomas Merton

The more I discover my own face, I discover the face of God. That's God's original plan. There's no way to DO IT because you already ARE IT. Humans do not know what they are doing; every other creature is just doing what they are.

There’s a lot to be said about nothing.

In the embrace of the brackets - (b)