There is great value to be realized in periods of solitude and silence for those whose lives are in and of the world. Although I had gone into solitude for four days every year over the past twenty years, I needed a more sustained period of aloneness to recover the freshness of my spirit and to see that which was not true. "Nowhere to go, nothing to do" — these were the words that informed my days.
One morning, as a fire flamed back of a handsome eighteenth-century glass screen, I looked for the silence underneath the explosions of the fire... By now I was adept at finding the silence wherever it was. As I settled into it this morning, letting it fill my ears, mind and being, I heard the words: "I'll never abandon you, no matter what you do." ... Once I heard it, I learned to go and find, first the silence and then to wait for the voice. It comes OUT of the silence. It doesn't always come. But somehow I know it will again. And this knowledge has changed my existence. What I have to do, I now understand, is keep myself ready to hear it when it does.
