The Other Side of Silence

For two years, I've been on a quest of contemplation, what Thomas Merton called "the center, the existential altar which simply ‘is.’” 

My guides have been Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart, Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation and The Way of Chuang Tzu, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. I've spent two weekends in a Trappist monastery and two weekends in a rustic hermitage on the shore of Pomme de Terre Lake. 

My first experience of sustained solitude at the abbey began with the hope of "hearing the whisper" and ended in the ice cold sea of doubt. Slowly I thawed from that experience, and my brief stay several months later in the rustic hermitage felt healing. 

Another trip to the abbey in early 2012 helped bring some familiarity to this practice of contemplation. Now I just returned from the solitude of the 15 x 15 hermitage on Pomme de Terre. 

What enlightenment do I have to pass along? Not much. Instead, I'm finding:

The quieter I am, the less I have to say