The contemplative life must provide an area, a space of liberty, of silence, in which possibilities are allowed to surface and new choices - beyond routine choice - become manifest. It should create a new experience of time, not as stopgap, stillness, but as 'temps vierge' - not blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentialities and hopes - and it's own presence to itself. Ones own time. But not dominated by ones own ego and its demands. Hence open to others - compassionate time, rooted in sense of common illusion and in criticism of it. - Thomas Merton, November 7, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (117)
Our community, Nigel, Margarida, Cynthia and I, along with our formation director in Toronto, Sister Isabel, went on a retreat to the Loretta Center in Niagara Falls. A large dormitory type house that reminded me both of a hospital, and a southern mansion, with it's quiet cavernous hallways, large porch and balconies, and it's white-walled old fashioned interiors. It's wonderfully located overlooking the Falls, yet isolated enough from the tourists to remain a place of quiet and solitude. It was a good time to leave the busy-ness of Toronto, and have some time to relax and enjoy one another's company, and to reflect and refresh ones soul.
We arrived Friday night, and stayed until Monday afternoon. Saturday morning I got up early for a bit of a run, carving my way down towards the Falls - down the street between the towering hotels, down a tree-lined dirt path, down past a golf course and a garden lined with magnolia trees, and across the street to the sidewalk beside the rushing waters. It was a nice quiet moment along the Falls. There were few people out at that time, and the sun was shining on my face.
The retreat center wasn't as isolated as some of us would have liked. There was a certain lack of a real natural environment, but as I had never been to the Falls before, it was nice to play tourist for a little while. Three of us went on The Maid of the Mist, which was a lot of fun.
And besides the Falls, we went to the Butterfly Conservatory - "an ingenious network of pathways among lush, exotic flora... exquisite butterflies floating in the warm, moist air or spreading their iridescent wings on leaves and flowers."
It was a beautiful place. I couldn't help but feel like a kid again, following the more than two thousand butterflies dance around and above us, and rest on petals and fingertips. The goal for many people was to have a butterfly land on them. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch those moments for Cynthia and Margarida.
Our retreat director, Sister Isabel, formed the weekend around the idea of our desires. What is it that we are desiring in life? It was a good reminder of what I'm seeking, what my dreams are, where my heart is. Questions still linger.
"This then is what it means to seek God perfectly: to withdraw from illusion and pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires, from the works that God does not want, from a glory that is only human display; to keep my mind free from confusion in order that my liberty may be always at the disposal of His will; to entertain silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God; to cultivate an intellectual freedom from the images of created things in order to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all men as myself; to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with other men; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no obligation to carry; to have a will that is always ready to fold back within itself and draw all the powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless concentration upon the point of my dependence on Him; to gather all that I am, and have all that I can possibly suffer or do or be, and abandon them all to God in the resignation of a perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to do His will.
And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things.
Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei. ("It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God.") - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (45, 46)
