A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation

any concept that attempts to define God “becomes an idol of God and does not make God known.”

“Prayer consists of attention,” and “the quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer.”

Saint John of the Cross stated it as simply as he could: “The soul’s center is God.”

Boredom heals by diminishing our reliance on this spiritual glitz that keeps us preoccupied with how our prayer is progressing.

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 gaze of the heart is always gazing into God, for this is quite simply what the heart’s depth does.

“We are not referring to some dark corner, but to a vast inner space.”6 According to St. Augustine, this vast inner space of the soul, an “abyss” as he terms it, is completely open and porous to God: “Indeed, Lord, to your eyes, the abyss of human consciousness is naked.”

Literally “compassion” means to feel with. The word betokens more a felt solidarity with a person than positive feelings for a particular person.

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.

The traditional role of God the Holy Spirit is to conform us to God the Word, Who then ushers us into the silent depths of God the Father.