Alyosha emerged from the dream transformed. Something burned in his heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul. ...Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. ...Alyosha felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as the heavenly vault descend into his soul. ...Never in his life would he forget that moment.
~ from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The point of passing time in solitude is to strip yourself bare, to discover what is essential and true. When you are stripped down to this point, you see how little you amount to. But that little is what God is interested in.
One of the things he liked most about the hermitage was the silence. "Silence is my music now." He could pick up the small sounds of insects and animals. Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic to him. He liked to think of all the people going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying where he was for their sakes, "like a lighthouse keeper."
~ from "The Music of Silence" by Phyllis Rose in Atlantic Monthly" - Oct. 1997
