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The skin of the world is worn thin here. Seven times a day the monks
chant the ancient poetry of God saving his people and showing his mercy.
Seven times a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year since 1848. Each
prayer by each monk wears down the thick hide of the world, that covering
that insulates from the spirit, from feeling, from the deeps of even our
own being.
 Here the skin
is thin and permeable. The spirit of God moves easily and effortlessly
into the world of the monastery, moves easily and deftly into my soul.
It is the quiet, the quiet. It is in the quiet that I can dive into my
deeps. It is there that I can meet and embrace myself, all of my selves:
ego, id, superego, shadow self, my self, the archetypal self, and finally
The Self. It is through this solitude that I can begin the journey back
home, back to who I was before I became anyone. Back home, all the way
back to him who knitted me in my mother's womb.
Jesus said that we were in the world but not of the world. I begin to
know what he meant. In my own world of thick hides and cacophonous noise,
I must find a small space that I too can wear thin with my prayers, a small
space where I can dive and find myself in Him and He in me. |