A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation

Spiritual progress is learning to confront struggle in a new way so that we don’t struggle with the fact that life is fraught with struggle.

that power which is both everywhere and yet nowhere,

I have not met one dedicated person of prayer who walks a very dry, dark path who does not embody many of the cardinal and theological virtues, as well as many of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.13 By contrast I know many who have had quite explicit contemplative experiences yet have not integrated these experiences into a life of living faith and lov

“If you do not find yourself beautiful yet,” he advises, “act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also, cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to al

As St. Isaac of Nineveh puts it, “Without temptations, God’s concern is not perceived, nor is freedom of speech with him acquired, nor is spiritual wisdom learnt, nor does the love of God become grounded in the soul.”

deep prayer is not about a physically silent environment, but about the Loving Communion that is Silence itself, and Silence itself is deeper than the presence or absence of sound waves.

The sculptor imposes nothing but only frees what is held captive in stone. The practice of contemplation is something like this. It does not work by means of addition or acquisition, but by release, chiseling away thought-shackled illusions of separation from God.

The Center encompasses all things, even as it indwells all things, the way the sea fills the membrane of the sponge that makes its home in the sea.

because the thinking mind so dominates, there can be a bit of stiffness as it opens. This stiffness registers in the mind as boredom. With nothing for the grasping mind to do, it feels bored or even anxious.