I'm getting worse, about sending my regrets, that is. Or not inviting friends over. Or going meeting someplace. It is difficult to say, Non, je ne veux pas - no, I don't want to - without sounding rude.
I'm so much like the person in the poem by Naomi Shihab Nye ...
If they say We should get together
say why?
It's not that you don't love them anymore.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
This morning I was thinking of a Carmelite I knew, how she lived in the monastery all of her life and never left. How she returned to her cell every evening after choir, owning nothing, having nothing but solitude and pain, until her death of love.
Silence and solitude is difficult in this overconnected world. Still, it is healing and necessary. Those who love nature prefer the woods alone to the cabaret full of "cheer." This was Fr.Louis's struggle throughout his life. He never reconciled it. I too find I am preferring my alone time more and more. Benedict looks quite happy in his hermitage.
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