When we sit prayerfully in silence and solitude we are entering the desert, our desert. In this sacred space, the goal is not to hide from others, devoid of pain, or to hold ourselves apart from and above the community in which we live. It is to receive the grace to learn to face ourselves directly so we can learn to live ordinariness, to live ethically and generously with others.
As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there, too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
~ Walt Whitman, "As I Watche'd The Ploughman Ploughing,” in LEAVES OF GRASS
This is thy hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless.
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done.
Thee fully forth emerging silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
