Our image of solitude is often negative: withdrawal, isolation, distance from others. But this misrepresents the hermitage which is like a silent, invisible spiritual concourse; a place where many can converge without sinking into a crowd, and become a community of love. Every human heart is a hermitage, if we care to enter and find ourselves there in union with all. In solitude friend, foe, and stranger are equally known in love.
Nothing was changed, yet everything was changed. Compared to this, she felt as if she had been sleepwalking all of her life. "God is here."
I pierce the universe. God pierces me. I do not think; I am thought. I do not know; I am known.
Every movement, every breath was poetry. She had passed through her dark night of the soul, and understood now how the light in one's heart – the light of faith – could shine brighter than the midday sun.
