The Quiet Place

On a regular basis, a good many of us find it difficult to place ourselves both physically and spiritually in a "quiet place” where by desire and desert solitude we can simply “be” in the presence of God. I know that we're told that we can do so even in a busy airport where in some corner, amid all the announcements and distractions, we can enter an oxymoronic "terminal tranquility." But most of us beginning contemplatives naturally prefer the stillness of a garden, a room part, an empty chapel to the hurley-burley of a chair in WalMart. Somewhere deep inside of us there’s a nagging realization that Tom Merton has a good part of it right with this comment, made late in his life:

This will give us some idea of the proper preparation that the contemplative life requires. A life that is quiet, lived in the country, in touch with the rhythm of nature and the seasons. A life in which there is manual work, the exercise of arts and skills, not in a spirit of dilettantism, but with genuine reference to the needs of one's existence. The cultivation of the land, the care of farm animals, gardening. A broad and serious literary culture, music, art, again not in the spirit of Time and Life-(a chatty introduction to Titian, Prexiteles, and Jackson Pollock)-but a genuine and creative appreciation of the way poems, pictures, etc., are made. A life in which there is such a thing as serious conversation, and little or no TV. These things are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed. (The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. ed. William H. Shannon. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, 131)

Speaking for myself, I don’t really have a country life, my days cultivating the land; nor do I spend my hours in a “broad and serious literary culture” even though I’m a retired English professor. I wake up, sit in centering prayer for a while, have breakfast with June, do the traditional prayer office with her, and then try to make some headway in accomplishing the day’s obligations. Today, for example, I’ve got to “clean out” the debris (logs, old torn-away decks, hunks of styrofoam, and so on) from the lake cove. Jackson Lake is feed by three rivers; and when the rains come long and hard, upstream trash comes pouring into the lake. Since we live on the east side in a cove, the westerly winds blow the stuff up against the shore line. Right now it’s awful. So this week, my neighbors and I will load up a Georgia Power trash barge , and five or six times we’ll transport the head-high piles of river junk five miles down to the dam where we’ll unload it for recycling. That work will take four or five us three or four days. Some contemplative life, eh?

The good side of everything is that I get to work outside, away from the incessant noise of the TV. And while the lake trash sometimes smells awful (rotting leaves in the water), I do get to feel the sun’s warmth inbetween the showers, hear the screams of a hawk now and then, and see the rhododendrons in full bloom.

I take encouragement that Merton concludes his environmental remarks concerning the contemplative life when he says, “These things [“the exercise of arts and skills”] are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed.” Well, I suppose, like you, I too am getting “the type of exercise that is needed.” You do your office work, mow the grass, and feed the kids. I know that Merton himself was also frequently frustrated by his lack of time for solitude and quiet. After all, his monastery was nothing less than a huge bread factory, and he often complained about its noise and commercial preoccupations. The grind of the tractors in the fields were particularly bothersome (as were the roar of the bombers flying over from Fort Campbell.) All of which is to say that none of us has a so-called perfect place, neither inside or outside ourselves, wherein we may be always fully at rest in God. That will come only in death and life thereafter. But we should all take encouragement by the desire we have within us. That desire comes by the prompting of Holy Spirit. Keeping our eyes and ears open for beauty and loveliness, we can practice pausing often—and sometimes for quite a while—to enter the Quiet we seek. For me, sometimes the beginning of a contemplative turn comes just sitting to catch my breath. I know the same goes for you too.

There is in the heart "the peace of God that passeth all understanding," a quietness and confidence which is the source of all strength, a sweet peace, which nothing can offend, a deep rest which the world can neither give nortake away. There is in the center of the soul a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter and hush every other sound, we will hear His still small voice. (The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for theSpiritual Journey. Ed, Paul Harris. Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois. 1995) , 15.