I think there may be a song in here. After all, how can we keep from singing?
Please tell my mama her lost child is coming home. She’ll be watching by her window, praying, “Lord, how long?” I could see her candle burning when all other light was gone. Tell my mama her lost child is coming home.
The deep waters stretched before me; thought I heard a siren’s song. Now I know it was an angel all along, with a message to implore me to turn back where I’d gone wrong, and be welcomed to a place where I belong.
Please tell my mama her lost child is coming home. She’ll be watching by the window, praying, “Lord, how long?” I could feel her spirit yearning when her hope was almost gone. Tell my mama her lost child is coming home.
As the darkness closed above me where I sank there, like a stone, having almost lost the faith I’d always known, from the hands of One who’ll love me when most other loves have flown a strong lifeline of God’s grace for me was thrown.
Please tell my mama her lost child is coming home. She’ll be watching by the window, praying, “Lord, how long?” I could see her candle burning when all other light was gone. Tell my mama her lost child is coming home.
As the candle of her memory keeps on shrinking ever small, and its shadows come to waltz her down the hall, by the grace that’s planted in me where her prayers like seeds did fall, God, please grow a tree of faith and love, so tall.
Please tell my mama her lost child has come on home. She’s been watching by the window, praying, “Lord, how long?” Now she sees Love’s candle burning where our hearts were all along. Tell my mama her lost child has come on home.
Thank you, Mama, that this child has made it home.
“In the momentum of the day’s demands, we’re skimming over the depths of our own life. We’re suffering from depth deprivation. What’s regrettable is that God’s unexplainable oneness with us is hidden in the depths over which we’re skimming.”—James Finley
We drift along, a mindless throng, and miss the art of Heaven that’s all around, from sky to ground, within each moment given.
The smile of God where we must trod, from age to age, keeps gleaming; a presence bright in our dark night, the Light of Love is beaming.
Though mindful of the ways our lives have failed to manifest, in purity and authenticity, Your ineffable art, aid us in making of ourselves expressive oblations of beauty that You may be praised, others may be inspired, and we may be fulfilled by blooming into the persons we were created to be.
Take a moment, wherever you are, to be held by silence.
All that surrounds you— the air and its elements, the anticipatory darkness, the lone light of presence, warmth of the respiring world, the benevolence of memory, the receptivity of the now, the hope-held morrow— also lies within you.
Recently I had the opportunity to go for a weekend contemplative retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a trappist monastery established in 1848 near New Haven, Kentucky. Many of you may know that one of the most influential spiritual figures/writers of modern times, Thomas Merton, spent the last 20 years of his life at the Abbey. The retreat was an incredibly impactful experience from which I hope to continue to draw in the coming years.
Situated in the rolling hills and knobs of the region, the Abbey has miles of serenely beautiful hiking trails with statues, forest lakes, farmland, and a scenic cross on a nearby hillside with a picturesque view of the Abbey church and grounds. All very conducive to supporting contemplative experience.
The church, with its extended nave, wonderful acoustics, and ethereal stained glass, a prayer in and of itself, holds seven worship services per day that persons on retreat are welcome to attend. The first service, a vigil, starts at 3:15 am. When a retreat attendee asked one of the monks why the first service was so early, the monk responded, “Because our Lord asks us to stay awake with Him in the garden while He prays.” That same monk, our retreat leader, advised us to avoid setting a lot of goals for the weekend. “Instead,” he said, “our advice is to try and learn to let God love you here.”
The Abbey has a wonderful library, and many locations for silent reading, study, prayer, writing, and contemplation. The surrounding knobs and valleys ring out every hour with the tolling of the Abbey bell, calling all hearers back to prayer and presence, and by these, to renewal.
Silence is central to the retreat experience at the Abbey, and for me, was the most meaningful aspect of the weekend. Even in worship services, between readings and the chanting of psalms and hymns, intentional space is kept for silence. This was particularly powerful in the final worship service of the weekend, the compline, during which each of the retreat attendees received a benedictory blessing from the Abbott. After incense was prepared and the opening scriptures and prayers received, there was about 15 minutes of complete silence. This had a greater impact on me than any other part of the weekend. There was something so powerful about stopping for communal silence in that place whose walls had absorbed decades of hymns and prayers. So many lives, pausing together, hearts’ and minds’ intent aligned in worship and prayer, was enough to bring me to tears.
At the end of each service, all the lights are extinguished except a lone candle on the altar. After the last service of the retreat, I went up to the balcony and sat for a while, simply pondering the dark sanctuary, and the one lone light shining in the darkness, “and the darkness has not overcome it.” Leaving the next day, I carried some of that light and silence within me, which I hope to be able to share with others in the coming days.
I’m grateful for a blessed time of retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani.
(Inspired by Living River: A Retreat on the Cahaba)
I wandered away to the woods today; to the woods, I came all alone to listen for what the silence might say in mysterious tongues, unknown.
It wasn’t a total absence of sound I sought in the forest deep, but, a song of the sabbath all around with a promise of peace to keep.
On a bend of the river, in the shade of an oak in its elderhood, I sat down on a log the water made an island of ancient wood.
The path of a heron through misty air, translucent of wing at dawn, did beckon my body to follow where my spirit had already gone.
Ineffably, in the stillness, I knew I had been to this place before when my mind was a sky of azure blue and my heart was an open door.
Though a peace like a gently gurgling stream began to upwell within, my heart felt a sadness, as in a dream to which one can’t return again.
The only voice speaking was silence, then; all others had died away. The veil of existence was growing thin like a vapor at dawn of day.
I had nothing to leave in homage, there, but deep gratitude and my tears for the silence I’ll carry everywhere as I move through the passing years.
There are some who may be unable to find such woodlands of sweet repose, because of the struggles they’re going through or some grief that nobody knows.
But, I pray, if they listen when I’m near with an open heart and will, the silence I came to the woods to hear may whisper to them, “Peace, be still.”
The Wooded Path 
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