To inhabit silence in our aloneness is to stop telling the story altogether.
david whyte
I peer around the corner of the bank of windows, hanging a bit precariously out the ledge, wondering if anyone else has flung the window wide. The mower is going full tilt, mowing what, I have no idea; maybe just sticking to the schedule…
No-one else has a window open. The sun shines, the thermometer reads 67 degrees, and yet everyone is stuffed inside the 74 degree furnace-air filled building breathing in this stale heat and inhaling the manufactured warmth.
Throw open the windows I say!
Be gone the demons of expectations and rules!
When a December day offers 67 degrees, and the stifling flair of the furnace pumps air unrequested into every stairwell and cell, throw open the windows and let your silence be heard by more than the monks call to prayer that you, once again, obligingly obey as you slip quietly from your room and stoically ramble down the hall to chapel.
Ignore the weather calling to you from outside. Stay firm in your conviction being made by your attendance to this ancient tradition.
I hear the bells toll, I listen to the doors quietly open and click shut. I sit, sip my tea and smile a bit wider. Here I am, at the Abbey of Gethsemani, fully enraptured by all that surrounds me, entirely taken in delight and awe by the wonder of not just this place, but the land on which it rests; mother nature offering these structures of human design a place to stand, and willing my fellow retreatants, all silent and spiritual, all repentant and raw, to face the place they are in if they, we, allow our eyes to see.
Turn your vision to the skies you people! Throw away your cassocks and cords and look at what shines there, right in front of your face; life before you.
I can sit here, fingers on keyboard, proclaiming the value of this solitude, but not as those do who-with extreme caution of click, close their cell doors and head to the next obligation of hours.
With tea in hand I watch the sun begin to set, the sky begin to quiet, and feel the wonder rise in my heart as this, another day that I have been granted to be alive, here, now, is coming to a close. This is my god. This is my church. This is my holiness coming to life in my life.
Here I am.
I get to.