Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

It is crucial to be able to spot these stories, for there will be no liberation until we learn to drop the elaborate commentaries on our anger, and we cannot drop them until we can see ourselves doing it.

A mature contemplative practice places us squarely before the wound of the human condition, and we learn to meet our wounds in a new way. At first this is difficult, and there is great resistance. But gradually we learn something very precious under the tutelage of these wounds. We learn a compassion for others that replaces judging, self-loathing,

Simone Weil. “Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”

takes less than a minute of attempting to practice inner stillness to realize that however fidgety the body may be the real obstacle to inner silence is the mind.

Our unknowing goes deeper into God than our knowing goes.

It is important to notice that it isn’t a question of having no thoughts. Diadochos is aware that there is a dimension of the mind that is always doing something. So give it something to do: let it quietly repeat a short phrase.

failure is part of the search for God.

John of the Cross says, “The Father spoke one Word, which was His Son, and this Word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence must It be heard by the soul.”7 In the Cherubinic Wanderer Angelus

“the silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.”