My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, coffee life, spirituality and asking deep questions.
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
Thomas Merton
When I was younger my friends and I would ride our bicycles to Lake Loveland and fish. Our quest was for crappie and perch that gathered along the trunks of the trees in the water. If memory serves me we would use simple little jigs and it was pretty easy pickings. I have very good memories of those days. And amazingly we did not have smartphones to document it. Nor did mom send us a text message telling us dinner was ready. There seemed to be more silence back then. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Sunset along Peralta Trail, Arizona – November 2003
Not sure about you but so far the year has run rather smoothly. We’ll see what day two brings. This morning we had clear blue skies, sunshine and cold. Pretty much what a January day is in Colorado. I rode my bicycle to coffee this morning and took the long cut home. Good start to my day! I have a crockpot of cabbage and sausage cooking. This afternoon we have had soft white clouds floating across an azure blue sky.
My whole silence is full of prayer.
Thomas Merton
Silence has become a gift in my life over the past 10 years. I have adjusted to living a single life and its freedom. Living alone allows silence to become a prominent part of my day. Because of the silence in my life I find the noise of the world disturbing and annoying. There are few places, if any, where there is not some impact of sound by man’s machines. I am learning in my practice of prayer and meditation to allow them to become a distant hum. I like to believe it’s at those moments that I am in prayer. When I can do the same in a coffee shop I also consider that silence to be prayer.
This image was taken along the Peralta Trail east of Phoenix with a Nikon D100 and Nikon 24-85mm f2.8-4.0, at 1/6 second, f16, ISO 200.
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
I want not only to observe but to know living beings, and this implies a dimension of primordial familiarity which is simple and primitive and religious and poor.
Thomas Merton, The Trees Say Nothing
I would add that this familiarity needs to be in their natural environment; the city park, the mountains, prairie, desert, yards, and gardens. All living beings share this world with me so spending time with them is the gift.
… the dawn is by its very nature, a peaceful, mysterious and contemplative time of day – a time when one naturally pauses and looks with awe at the eastern sky. It is a time of new life, new beginning, and therefore important to the spiritual life: for the spiritual life is nothing else but a perpetual interior renewal.
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it,
I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively, no distraction.
My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer.
The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer. Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, … and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer:
where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.
Thomas Merton
Someone introduced me to the above prayer/poem by Thomas Merton this past Saturday. This prayer resonates with me because both silence and prayer have become a major part of my adult life. I am never the same after standing in the silence and solitude before a predawn sky over Dixon Reservoir. I’ve come to believe it is in the silence and solitude I’m more apt to hear the prayers within me that do transform me. And in that transformation I’ve come to ponder the question, What would our world be like if more people listened in the silence and solitude of prayer? Plus, silence and solitude are great teachers at listening. I’d venture to say the world needs more listeners than talkers.
I began writing this post on Sunday afternoon and will schedule its posting for 7:00 am today, which is when they start my surgery. I’ll let you know how that all turns out later.
We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us.
Thomas Merton
I finished my taxes yesterday. My taxes are pretty easy because I do not have the millions that some of you have to deal with. I just enter zeros and I’m done.
I’ve been working on a couple of ongoing writing and photography projects the last few days and plan on more of that today. Drove to Pineridge Natural Area early this morning for predawn colors before having a mocha latte at Mugs. I’m usually not too excited with cloudless skies but this morning was an exception. Hope you are being true to yourself today!
