Posted on by Kurt Bodling

silence comes in time

“If we walk toward God, there comes a moment when speech is useless and uninteresting because [of all things] contemplation alone has any importance. And so, more than any other reality, monastic life enables souls to contemplate God. The silence of the monasteries provides the best earthly setting for the person who wants to ascend toward the One who awaits him.” Thought 124.

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 72

Comment: On the other hand, Merton wrote about how noisy monasteries are and, therefore, unsuited to contemplation.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

temptation and contemplation

"The urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.

“The contemplative life today must be a life of deep sorrow and contrition, but a pure sorrow, a healing and life-giving repentance such as we find in some of the characters of Dostoyevsky.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003. (NOTE: written by Merton in 1959), p. 121

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clear thinking

“Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused? Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought.”

Merton, Thomas. “Events and Pseudo-Events Letter to a Southern Churchman.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 300

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false self

“Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real.”

Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, p. 85

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silence in relationships

"The silence of listening is a form of attention, a gift of self to the other, and a mark of moral generosity. It should manifest an awareness of our humility so as to agree to receive from another person a gift God is giving us. For the other person is always a treasure and a precious gift that God offers to help us grow in humility, humanity, and nobility.

“I think that the most defective human relationship is precisely one in which the silence of attention is absent.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 81.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

a quiet silence

“In order to listen, it is necessary to keep quiet. I do not mean merely a sort of constraint to be physically silent and not to interrupt what someone is saying, but rather an interior silence, in other words, a silence that not only is directed toward receiving the other person’s words but also reflects a heart overflowing with a humble love, capable of attention, friendly welcome and voluntary self denial, and strong with the awareness of our poverty.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 81.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the true self’s non-focus

“The worth and meaning of every ascetic practice are to be estimated in terms of quietude, lucidity of spirit, love, and purity of heart. Anything that does not lead to these is worthless, for instead of liberating us from self-preoccupation, it only reinforces our illusory and obsessive concern with our own ego and its victory over the ‘not-I.’ True quietude and purity of heart are impossible where this division of the ‘I’ (considered as right and good) and the ‘not-I’ (considered as threatening) governs our conduct and our decisions.”

Merton, Thomas. “The Spiritual Father in the Desert Tradition.” (1968) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 320

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pilgrims remember and love

“Pilgrimage in that moment seemed less to me like exteriorized mysticism and more a rite of remembrance. The world would have us forget what is painful. It would have us move on and be free of the past; but both as individuals and societies, we have our loyalties to what we have known and endured. Pilgrimage gave us the illusion of a forward movement across space, even as it allowed an inner journey toward communion with our past. It was a crystallization of the poet Joseph Brodsky’s idea that “if there is any substitute for love, it’s memory.””

Taseer, Aatish Ali. A Pilgrimage Year. New York Times Style Magazine. 9 November 2023. <viewed online 12 November 2023 at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/09/t-magazine/travel-bolivia-mongolia-iraq.html&gt;

In pilgrimage our bodies move forward, and our hearts move inward or outward at the same time. I think he’s saying here that our love for God and the saints (however defined) moves us to want to be where they were (are?) so that we can ‘commune with our past’.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

poverty and contemplation

“It is true, however, that a certain degree of economic security is morally necessary to provide a minimum of stability without which a life of prayer can hardly be learned. But ‘a certain degree of economic security’ does not mean comfort, the satisfaction of every bodily and psychological need, and a high standard of living. The contemplative needs to be properly fed, clothed and housed. But he also needs to share something of the hardships of the poor.”

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 251

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what hesychasm is

“The Greek term hesychia means a state of silence, stillness, or tranquility, as a result of the cessation of external trouble and internal agitation. Cassian’s ‘purity of heart’ contains the aspect of ‘tranquility of mind’ and thus, the idea of hesychia. The term also means solitude or retreat. Hermits and cenobites alike seek hesychia as an essential value, but in the earliest sources, the term ‘hesychast’ usually denotes a monk living in solitude, or hermit.”

Wong, Joseph. “The Threefold Good: Romualdian Charism and Monastic Tradition.” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002, pp. 87-88