Monday, April 13, 2009
Returning and reflecting
Tweet
I'm back from my weekend retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Actually I spent most of my time at Bethany Spring, which is a retreat house run by the Thomas Merton Institute. It was a fantastic getaway, a beautiful setting, and a very meaningful experience for me. I hope to blog some of the thoughts, writings, experiences I had over the next few days. For now, I'm going to copy a quote from Merton that I'll be holding onto for a while, and include a few black&white pictures.
"Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen. What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is a higher kind of listening...a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void. In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation...He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is 'answered' it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a great word of power, full of the voice of God." - Thomas Merton, "Contemplative Prayer"
I'm back from my weekend retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Actually I spent most of my time at Bethany Spring, which is a retreat house run by the Thomas Merton Institute. It was a fantastic getaway, a beautiful setting, and a very meaningful experience for me. I hope to blog some of the thoughts, writings, experiences I had over the next few days. For now, I'm going to copy a quote from Merton that I'll be holding onto for a while, and include a few black&white pictures.
"Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen. What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is a higher kind of listening...a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void. In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation...He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is 'answered' it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a great word of power, full of the voice of God." - Thomas Merton, "Contemplative Prayer"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment