If you seek Wisdom in the first place, you will find that Wisdom is joyous. If you seek the joy of Wisdom in the first place, you will fall prey to illusions.
~ Valentin Tomberg in MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT
SILENCE was the first prayer I learned to trust when I began my visits to San Damiano. Only later did I begin to let the words in. The silence of the chapel at prayer was broken only by a habit of praise that I came to see was so primal it was not only human. It was — or it mimicked exactly — the essential utterance of existence. It rose from the raw passion which rules life, an urge which has no voice but craves articulation. This communal prayer voiced a harmony otherwise elusive in all of creation, yet thrumming in the monastic silence.