Lent - Keep it simple

Pools of Silence

Deserts, silence, solitudes are not necessary places but states of mind and heart.  These deserts can be found in the middle of the city and in every day of our lives. We need only look for them and realise our tremendous need of them.  They will be small solitudes, little deserts, tiny pools of silence, but the experience they will bring, if we are disposed to enter them, may be as exultant and as holy as all the deserts of the world, even the one that God entered. For it is God who makes solitude, deserts and silences holy.

Consider the solitude of walking home from the bus or from the shops in the evening, when  the streets are quieter and there are few passersby. Consider the solitude that greets you when you enter your room to change from your outside clothes to more comfortable, homely ones. Consider the solitude of someone in charge of the domestic arrangements at home as they are perhaps alone in the kitchen, sitting down for a cup of coffee before beginning the work of the day.  Think of the solitudes afforded in the common humble tasks around the house.

One of the first steps towards solitude is departure.  Were you to depart to a real desert, you might take a plane, train or car to get there.  But we’re blind to the ‘little departures’ that fill our days.  These ‘little solitudes’ are often right behind the door that we can open, or in a little corner where we can stop to look at a tree that somehow survived the snow and dust of a city street.  There is the solitude of a car as we travel alone, riding bumper to bumper on a crowded highway.  This too can be a point of departure to a desert, silence solitude.

Try to find a pool of silence today 

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can; 

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; 

enjoying one moment at a time; 

accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it; 

trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will; 

that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with Him

forever in the next. 

Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)