Be Still

Be still, and know that I am God 

Ps 46:10

This silence is not the exclusive prerogative of monasteries or convents. This simple prayerful silence is everybody's silence - or if it isn't, it should be. It  belongs to every Christian who loves God, to every Jew who has heard in his heart the echoes of God's voice in his prophets, to everyone whose soul has risen in search of truth,  in search of God,  for where noise is - inward noise and confusion - there God is not.

Silence, solitudes are not necessarily places but states of mind and heart. These deserts can be found in the midst of the city, and in the every day of our lives. They will be small solitudes, tiny pools of silence, but the experience they will bring, if we are disposed to enter them, may be as exultant and as holy as all the deserts of the world,  even the one God himself entered. For it is God who makes solitude holy.

Poustinia

Catherine de Hueck Doherty