SILENCE – NEW YEAR 2012
Looking at the seashore – October
weather for end of December.
Seashore is silent – no one around –
perhaps lone man walking on the beach.
Sunshine is full – takes chill
from gentle breeze.
All is silent – quiet – touching even
my bones – covers me – surrounds me.
Silence of the sea – Silence of God!
Someone is knocking at the door –
mystery.
Our world is not silent – injustices –
violence – wars blare out noise –
overwhelming us – surrounding
us with endless lies – cover-ups.
We are winning wars over
millions of dead bodies.
I do not know the answer to the
violence of the world.
I hear it – suffer under it.
So let silence touch me –
silence of the sea - silence of God.
Let me not give up hope –
Silence of the sea is mysterious –
life is a mystery
but God is there –
in the silence – in the noise.
World – its troubles are beyond me.
Silence of the sea warps around me –
mysterious hand of God – clasping me –
giving me hope despite it all.
Robert Trabold
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NEW YEAR - 2012
Robert Trabold
As we come to the end of December and celebrate the season of Christmas, we realize that we are closing another year. At first, we wonder where the year went because time goes by quickly as we are busy with the many things of our life. We begin a new year which most probably will go also very quickly. With this passing and going of time, we might take a moment to reflect on our life to see where it went in the old year and where we might want it to go in the next one. Our life is filled with many things – some good, others of doubtful value. The challenge is to sort these things out and get a clear vision of where our life should go. As contemplative people who strive to meditate twice a day for twenty minutes, this discipline helps us enter into a deeper level of life and so find the values and ways to live in an authentic God like way.
In our inward journey of contemplation, we are making a journey to encounter the divine at our center and still point. We do not look outside for this meeting but within us. In our prayer, we are touching someone who is beyond us but also within us and ultimately is the ground of our being. In meditation, we are stepping back from the many activities of our daily living and focusing our attention on an invisible world. We are building a relationship with the divine who grasps us and becomes the center of our life. In this inner journey, we feel that someone loves us and wants us to respond with reciprocal love on our part. John Main, the great spiritual teacher, mentions that we are called to a purity of heart, that is, a heart that focuses its attention on the divine and attempts to orientate the person’s life around this call and response to love. Being faithful to our daily discipline of meditation, we will grow in understanding of what is essential in our life and what should be discarded. Jesus is the teacher who will lead us on. This journey to purity of heart is difficult, because we are human beings and our lives are shot through with selfishness and pride. This is the baggage of our human life and we have to carry it through the years but need to be faithful in our struggle to overcome these human characteristics and attempt to focus on the way of selfless love to which Jesus calls us. In this struggle and inward journey, we realize that the treasure that we are looking for is within us and the divine offers us its hand to lead us on this trip of friendship and love.
In this inward journey to touch God at our center and still point, we develop a discipline of silence so that we focus our attention on the divine within us. We arrange our day so that we can find time to meditate twice for twenty minutes. We set up a still place in our house where we can pray and chose the posture that is helpful. In this quiet time, we repeat the mantra, a word, bringing us into the world of the divine and helping us touch our beloved Lord. It is important that we realize that meditation is not thinking about God and trying to penetrate this mystery with new theories and theologies. In a real sense, we leave behind our thoughts and analysis of the divine, desires and images of it and sit in the presence of the Lord who loves and calls us. It is a mysterious journey because our life is filled with many things and activities. Here we are called to be silent, just ‘do nothing’ and meet the Lord who is calling us. We are meeting the ground of our being who wants us to orientate our life around this invitation of reciprocal love. We find the real focus of our life around which we can orientate and place correctly the other things that come into and are in our path.
As we begin the New Year, let us as contemplatives try to realize more deeply the nature of the inward journey that we are on. It is not one of many words and thoughts but a trip that is much deeper and beyond words and desires. It is a trip to touch the presence of the divine in stillness and quiet at our center which is the most intimate relationship we can have as humans. No other person can be so close to us as the Lord within us. Silence is the language of God and this is how the divine calls us in meditation. The New Year will have its many challenges, personal and those of the world, but if we are grounded in our inward journey to the Lord, we will navigate these waters with their turbulence and be grounded in the divine. So the New Year will bring opportunities to grow in this relationship and we should use these days of the closing of the old year and the beginning of the new one to deepen our understanding and commitment to this inward journey to the divine.
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