How do we make a place sacred? By removing diversions. By creating silence. By bringing our presence and breath to a point of stillness. By listening with our skin, touching with our energy field, feeling with our senses. By holding intent as we enter a sacred place. By drawing out the power of a place with love, courage, and attention. By inviting spirit and welcoming it fully.
~ from "EarthLight" (Spring 2000, Issue 37) by Meg Beeler
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.
Our culture is losing the art of silence, and with it the intrinsic human understanding and capacity for prayer. Silent dwellers, by creating spacious times of physical silence in their lives, slowly recover the human capacity to be with themselves in a caring gentle way. For, it is in silence and solitude that one learns – or regains – the human quality of being in God's presence always.
