Louisville Process Theology Network

The Wordless Reality of Oneness

Jan 04, 2010

From Page 93:


?“We need the wordless contact with reality that comes only with silence. Silence is especially the ?‘language?’ of the person who chooses to live a life of solitude?… ?‘In solitude we remain face to face with the naked being of things?… When we have really met and known the world in silence, words to not separate us from the world, nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality?’?…

Thus, (Merton) would say that I come to know myself only in silence, not by reflection on the self, but by ?‘penetration to the mystery of my true self, which is beyond words and concepts because it is utterly particular?’?…

We admit that what is most dear to us in someone else remains indefinable, for there is nothing in nature which properly pertains to the person; who is always unique and incomparable. This is something I believe we all experience in dear friends. It is something we that we come to experience when we come to know Thomas Merton. He was so clearly himself: a free spirit who escapes our efforts to define him.

This unique particularity is also true of us. Our self-knowledge never fully grasps who we are. It never fully describes us. There is always ?‘more of us?’ left over.

For this self-knowledge ?‘opens out into the silence and the subjectivity of God?’s own self.?’ We ?‘see?’ God with the eyes of our inner selves which are not separate from God. We hear God with the ears of our ?‘hearts?’ which are attuned to the silence.

In the depths of silence, which is beyond words, we encounter God whom no eye can see and whom we can never name, yet in whom, ?‘we live and move and have our being.?’ In silence?’s depths, beyond words, there is no separation between ?‘I?’ and ?‘Not I.?’ For God is all in one.

All this means that we must come to see that there is much more to life than the fleeting fragments of it that we catch in our words. Life is not an interrupted flow of words which is finally silenced only by death. Rather, life develops in silence, comes to the surface in authentic words, and returns to a deeper silence; and at the end of life we speak our final word ?– our Amen to life ?– which ushers us into the silence of God?”




?“Thoughts in Solitude?” from Page 89:

?“Let me seek, then, the gift of silence and poverty and solitude,
where everything I touch is turned into prayer:
where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer,
for God is all in all.?”




To be continued in the next post.