Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.
Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1958)
Hiddenness is what is comes down to for me - hard as I find it sometimes, this call to hiddenness is fundamental to who I am. As I said in my post Ivy, back in Lent, it seems odd to be saying this kind of thing in a public blog, which could be construed as anything but hidden; yet it is true, and it is a kind of appetite with me. Where this is leading I still don't know, and maybe it's something that my retreat at the end of this month (I'm going to Compton Durville again) will reveal a little more. I do know that in some way this doesn't contradict the call to use the things I've been given: this blog, other writing, music and so on. More than that, I don't know.
Odd in a sense that this Merton quote should come up to focus this wondering, since the contradiction was present in Merton's life too, between the call he describes here, and his travelling, and his writing, which even in his own lifetime was becoming increasingly well-known. I wonder how it would have worked out for him, had he lived longer... (Not that I'm meaning to compare myself too closely with Merton - given my amazed respect for his work, that would be silly!)
4 comments:
Contradictions. . . .if we can live in them, that seems to be the liminal space, I think
Have you ever heard of Jeremy Young? I am just starting his book "The Cost of Certainty" and am being blown away, even by the first paragraph!
I smile as I read and review Ivy.
I have been there and for years thought I was alone and strange in this 'thing' of solitude and searching for what it all was.
I knew He was there in it and I knew it was a huge part of my spirituality...yet knew of no others who could tell me where, what , how.
One day at a bible study the clergy wives leading the group asked 'how are the different ways we pray'. I was laughed to scorn when I shared my prayer as sometimes sitting in the silence waiting for Him,stillness when words in prayer felt empty, and that even at times a deep sigh could be a profound prayer of my heart saying more than many words could ever say.
Yet...I KNEW Jesus was in that prayer.
Thank God for one of the Cowley fathers on study here from Canada who took me under his wing as my spir director and showed me that all this was the result of having the charism of a contemplative and that IT WAS NORMAL!! whew!
Your expression of hiddenness and desire for solitude is a God given gift unique to the charism of contemplatives!
Then, like your seraphic Father St Francis...go out and carry Him to the marketplace...then come back to the Beloved in solitide in all emptiness.
Your post today brought all this back fresh to my mind and I now go to prayer with a thankful heart for this unspeakable gift of Solitude.
Secular Contemplative/oxymoron!!!
Yet solidly real.
Blessings to you and your family.
This is a bit of the divine logic we hear in thoughts like this..."it is giving that we receive".
Who can bear the gifts of 'silence, poverty, and solitude' in a singular way? It's impossible for any extended period just as inhaling is impossible without exhaling (otherwise we are dead).
I love what Teresa said as much as this post :)
The charism of a contemplative. Sometimes I think that contemplatives are the bravest souls on the planet :)
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