May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow. May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth's fiery core. May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation.
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, thanks to Toto Rendlen
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
A blessed New Year, dear fiends! Winter is a natural season for seizing moments, if not hours or days, of solitude seasoned with silence. Here we come closer to eternal truths as we keep company with our indwelling Divine Guest. Here, we hear Love welcoming us home.
Vocation to solitude: To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, to entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who an belong completely to silence, let it soak into their bones, breathe nothing but silence, feed on silence, and turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. [Yet each of us is blessed when we offer our silence to the world as we can.]
A state of being alone, of inwardly directed consciousness, solitude is not necessarily physical isolation. In solitude, a person claims value for one's self as a free being. The value found in turning inward is the value of self-determination and responsibility. We find self-worth in solitude, in the core of our freedom. Solitude is necessary for spiritual and professional growth; solitude gives us the ability to face ourselves, others, and God.
Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee; All things are passing; God never changeth; Patient endurance Attaineth to all things; Who God possesseth, In nothing is wanting; Alone God sufficeth.
If you are truly called to a solitary lifestyle, eventually celibacy must follow. Solitude invites the presence of God, a presence which so consumes the soul, there is no lover energy available for an intense human commitment to intimacy. The deeper one goes into spiritual solitude, the lighter one travels. But it is not for us to divest ourselves -- at our own willed choosing -- of the things that are necessary for life within society. It is for God to strip us, often painfully, of them at a time when God knows -- if we do not -- that we must go more lightly into this Heart of Love.
In desert spirituality, the desert is considered a place of solitude, silence, simplicity, and peace; a place of blessing. It is where the focus is on God -- where we meet Goad and God meets us and disarms our hearts, a place that promises transformation and strengthening; a testing ground that requires us to make choices.
