A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation

Silence moves through all sound like water through netting.

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

ideally we nourish our bodies every day and so likewise we should nourish our spirit.

the pathless path of prayer knows only how to move through struggle; and the only way through is through—not around, over, under, or alongside, but through.

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.”

Contemplation is the soul’s Copernican revolution.

For us to move deeply into God’s deep movement in us, “whose margins are God’s margins,” as R. S. Thomas puts it, the senses must learn to abide in stillness.

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

“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.”