You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Persons hungry for silence and for solitude seek a depth of contemplative experience in which one's usual assumptions about daily life are brought into question. The hunger for retreat carries with it a recognition that there is no other way out of many situations in which we find ourselves in the complexity of our lives. There is no other way than to take our messes into the darkness of silence before the Beloved... that by going into this silence, darkness, and helplessness can life be brought forth to sustain either ourselves or our world.