#4 Solitude as Offering

post by Christine V. Paintner

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
-David Whyte

           

I follow the call to sink into the silence and stillness. Solitude calls my name and shows me my reflection as a sacred offering.  In this place the forest will ask me to embrace my truth once again. The hummingbird will invite me to sip holy nectar, the egret to stretch out my wings, the sparrows to remember my flock.

Each pine cone contains an epiphany, each smooth stone offers a revelation. I will watch and witness as the sun slowly makes her long arc across the sky and discover my own rising and falling. The moon will sing of quiet miracles – like those which reveal and conceal the world every day right before our eyes.
I am craving a wide sea of wordless moments. I want to become a disciple of silence and hear in that shimmering soundlessness the voice of the one who whispers in stillness, whose singing vibrates in stones, who out of the silence calls forth a radical commitment of which I do not yet know the shape.

This is the call of the monk: to remember again and again the treasures that silence can offer so that the One from whom we emerge and to whom we return can shower us with blessings, so that we might remember who we truly are.

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~~~

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, OblSB, REACE is the online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts and the author of 7 books on monastic spirituality and creativity, as well as a poet, photographer, spiritual director, retreat facilitator, and teacher.

Consider joining Christine, Kayce & others for Illuminating the Way: Epiphany & New Year Retreat with Monks, Mystics, & Archetypes. January 4 - February 7, 2015