“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “…only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

At Sky Farm, I would set the meditation timer on my phone, then just sit. Or kneel. But what then?

During the first few days, these silences were about letting the words drain away—or trying to, anyway. Words about God and prayer and Christianity. Words from books, sermons, blogs, videos, stories, songs, classes, conversations. Millions of words, accrued to me over decades.

One thing at Sky Farm.

Sometimes words are just clutter, something that blocks our view.

In The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton shares this saying from the Verba Seniorum:

“It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.”

It’s not just the words I receive that can be too much, it’s also the words that I offer. At moments it really would help to have a stone in my mouth that prevented me from speaking!

Maybe all this is why the deep silence at Sky Farm felt so necessary to me, so refreshing. Less clutter, and more of the one thing.

Last week I had the chance to spend five nights at Sky Farm.

Deep solitude. Deep silence.

Oak trees at Sky Farm near Sonoma, California

By deep silence, what I actually mean is the wind in the oaks, the California quail yelling chi-CA-go!, chi-CA-go!, the wild turkeys clucking and purring outside my window, the acorn woodpeckers jingling the birdfeeder as they gripped it with feet and tail to peck at the sunflower seeds.

And under all these, a baseline silence, full, weighted, and strong, like an enormous magnet inside the Earth. Like gravity itself—I could hear it at Sky Farm. Bird calls and cicadas and wind above and in sync with the silence during the day, and in the night, inside my hermitage with the windows shut: silence. Blank and heavy, molten and rolling.

Sunset in the meditation garden

On my first day, a quiet interior voice gave me a piece of advice, repeatedly, every time my inner lover of output and acquisition told me to “get some prayer done” or “take advantage of this opportunity.” Here’s what the quiet one said:

Just let the place work on you.

So I did, or I tried. Meaning that I didn’t try. I just stayed in it, in the silence, the presence, the gravity, the holy darkness of the chapel, the quiet by the pond.

In the refectory I found a booklet called To Hear Thoroughly: Father Dunstan Morrissey talks about his life,” in which someone had transcribed things that the man had said. To Father Dunstan, the “Word” in the Judeo-Christian tradition is “the dynamic that enters silence as when Isaiah says, ‘I send my word into the world and it will not return to me void.’” Of his years of solitude in Martinique, he said, “I felt the movement from silence into manifestation, and the return to silence. That was kind of the cantus firmus [strong song] for all the daily events.”

Golden poppies at Sky Farm

I thought about that a lot, and even found myself muttering about it to Father Dunstan, God rest his soul, as I wandered around the grounds.

The dynamic that enters silence.

Yes.

The movement from silence into manifestation,
and the return to silence.
This is the cantus firmus for all daily events.

Yes.

This, I think, must be one of the fundamental purposes of seeking contemplative silence: the hope of becoming more sensitive to and aligned with the deep movement of the Word. Finding the thread.

God speaks: the heavens are made;
God breathes: the stars shine.

About 10,000 galaxies appear in the Hubble ultra-deep-field image. A detail is shown to the left, and the full image is at the bottom of this post. It’s a real picture, not an artist’s rendition, and some of the galaxies in it are more than 13 billion years old.

Last week I had a dream in which I’m walking steadily up a hill, and I’m about five paces from the top. But no matter how many steps I take, I can’t crest the hill. The view stays the same: under my feet it’s an empty, dry-grass hillside. Everywhere else, space. Galaxies, stars, and nebulae are laid out before me, with inky blackness between them. No trees, houses, telephone poles, or mountains are on the horizon, and no clouds, moon, haze, or planets are in the sky. Only the unimpeded view of deep space.

It’s dazzling. Overwhelming. I plod forward because I’m scared to stop and look up. Reaching the other side of this hill seems like a worthy and achievable goal, and if I stop walking … well, a nameless fear grips me at this point. I don’t know why this vista of space in my dream scares the pants off me, but it does.

I have a lot of free time right now, and it won’t last forever. I’d like to slow down and be present to the time that I’ve been given, but some other part of me thinks it would be best to keep my feet moving towards a worthy and seemingly achievable goal, even if all that does is make me look busy.

So the gift of my dream is this idea: What if I dared to spend more time gazing, less time in motion?

When I imaginatively reenter my dream and picture myself stopping, lying on my back in the grass, and looking up, I see myself utterly undone by terror. (Again, I really can’t put words on why!) Okay, wide-eyed staring would be too much.

But I also see that to glance up and around for a moment, just a short moment, is significant. This act changes me, and maybe (who knows?) it changes the universe itself.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) image, Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see a larger version of it.

The cross-section of sky shown in the image is about the size of a 1 mm by 1 mm piece of paper held at arm’s length. To observe the entire sky in such detail, the Hubble would need to operate continuously for a million years. To see pictures of other mind-blowing sights in our universe, visit the Hubble gallery.

The ICEL Psalter, published in 1994 “for study and comment,” bears the imprimatur, a declaration from the Catholic church that a book is free of moral and doctrinal error.

Front matter from the Liturgical Psalter, © 1994, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc.

The imprimatur was revoked in 1998, apparently because of the translators’ use of gender-inclusive language. That was the end of the road for study and comment, as far as I know. The ICEL Psalter is out of print, and existing copies are expensive.

What a shame.

If you happen be one of the 38 people who worked on this beautiful and reverent translation (begun in 1964!), I thank you. Your work blesses me deeply and leads me closer to the living God.

Face me, I am desperate.

The first time I walked the outdoor labyrinth at Mercy Center Burlingame was the first time I walked any labyrinth. I had no expectations. Right away, the path led me close to the center, which surprised me. Here so soon?

But the path kept going, so I kept going. I turned, turned again, turned again. What I had done, I seemed to repeat.

Then the path led me out to the edge where a pine tree threw deep shade, and sap and pinecone petals on the ground made the way less distinct. That edge is the place for tangents (which meet the edges of curves everywhere), and walking along it, I felt like I might fall right out of the circle. But that shady quadrant is close to the achieved center, if you just keep walking.

The rock, and ...

When I turned the final corner and raised my eyes, I stopped, stunned. I’d already noticed the enormous rock in the center of the labyrinth, of course. But when I stood facing it, having traveled a winding path to reach it, I was facing myself. In that moment the rock was a mirror, a mirror that shows soul.

It’s been years since that shock, and it’s never happened again, no matter how many times I’ve walked that labyrinth or any other. I have some expectation now about what I’ll find, and so I never quite find it.

Even so, meaning unfolds for me on the path.

Yesterday I was at Mercy Center again, and I gazed at that rock for a long time. It’s weathered. Storms have pressured it, hands have touched it, gravity and the elements and the years have changed its shape, ever so slightly. Lichen has colored and hardened parts of it, and small nicks and breaks have changed its jaggedness.

Me

Walking in, I drag a world of storms and dissolution behind me. Events pressure me, hands touch me, gravity and the years reshape my jaggedness. I receive, receive, receive, and then I need to haul it all to the center of the labyrinth and dump it out like a box of broken glass and say, “Here it is. I don’t know what to do with it.”

Though I still don’t know what to do with it, at least I don’t have to drag it back out with me. A subtle shift occurs. Having faced the center, having been faced, I’m simpler and cleaner, more solid, more grounded. More like a rock.

.