View of "The Monarch" white pine tree at Hartwick Pines State Park in Grayling, Michigan. Sign in front of tree reads: "The Monarch. Height 160 ft. Memorial Park, Grayling, Mich." Handwritten on front: "White pine." Handwritten on back: "Dear Father, We passed thru Detroit last Thursday I thot [sic] of you. I am with Aunt Mary & Louis Niemann. Today we are enjoying the quietude of St. Ignace. Leaving for the Soo tomorrow. I am looking forward to a day's visit at Duns Scotus some day next week. Clara." Card is postmarked August 22, 1938.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Feel this calm ✨

Black heart / frozen tears

Can we just sit together for a while, hand in hand, with nothing but silence flowing between us, recollecting every tiny bit of joy that we shared together, even the most trivial of our experiences? How, even it be for an instance, it felt like being home, or having finally arrived somewhere, where someone actually gets to read your eyes, understands the emotions running there, hears your voice and understands the grief kept buried in it, touches you and understands how aroused you get. There's a heaven, a silent and secret heaven, kept in the realms of companionship as sweet as this. Why should we even taint it with our superfluous words? It would be enough that our hands hold each other, it would be enough that just silence flows between us - in that very moment, perhaps we'll feel the blissfulness of what treasures are kept, within the quietude of our souls...

Random Xpressions

Debemos aprender a escuchar la voz de Dios en la quietud. Dejar que Jesús actúe dándonos la fuerza, en medio de lo que estemos pasando. Para que su poder se glorie dentro de nosotros.Amen

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

— Marcus Aurelius

The morning sun broke gently over the lake, casting a warm glow on the solitary house that floated like a wayward dream, untethered from the mundane. This world was a whisper, a soft murmur of life where time did not press, and troubles were as distant as the shores bordering this water expanse. The house, an architectural love letter to the whimsical heart, was adorned with creeping vines—the vibrant gown of nature—clinging to the weathered stones and wood like the tender embraces of a long-parted lover.

Around this secluded abode, the water was reflective and still, disturbed only by the silent passage of a fish below or the occasional dip of an oar from the tiny docked boat, waiting patiently for a hand to guide it through the liquid expanse. Here, existence was distilled to the essentials, removed from the city life's cacophony where souls clamored loudly and close.

Lilypads dotted the surface, and it was easy to imagine them as stepping stones for the fair folk, leading to an unseen world beyond human sight. It was the sort of place one stumbled upon while lost, only to realize they had found precisely what they needed without knowing they had been searching.

As the day unfolded, the light danced across the rooftop, drawing out the oranges and browns of the tiles, a cresting wave frozen atop the house. Inside, there were no voices today, just the symphony of the structure itself—the creak of aging timber, the gentle tap of leaves against windowpanes, the deep, contented sighs of foundations at rest.

This was a scene of retreat, a corner of the world where the worn spirit could bask in solitude, where the only narratives woven were those of whispering trees and water that knew the secrets of the deep. Whether a soul resided there or if it awaited the return of an absent wanderer, one could only guess.

The world was young again in such a place, and anything seemed possible.

On the Contemplative Calling

Contemplation is a lifelong, solitary pursuit. It’s useful to have fellow wayfarers to check in with, and to find encouragement from, from time to time (“just to find one sign of the other world” from, as Rumi once wrote). But at the end of the day, the contemplative is one who finds themself utterly taken up with the task of digesting life, interiorly and exteriorly, through the lens of meticulous and penetrating attention.

Even when engaged in a group, authentic contemplative practice is a lone pursuit, and the container of a communal setting can in fact prove to be as much a fetter as a support. Many an aspirant cultivar of the intimate way has found themselves failed to launch when bounding from the context of communal practice, with all of the ado necessary to support and sustain that context providing enough distraction for periods of formal practice to become endurable, body-only exercises, encountered as unfortunate interspersings between periods of idoled life.

While frequently cast as a fanciful alternative to the busyness of the world, the contemplative life is not one of proactive retreat, rather, it is a vocation born of an inescapable awareness of the inexorable solitude found at the heart of one’s being. In this, contemplation is a calling born of specific awareness, not awareness born of calling out for quiet or a break. Indeed, in the contemplative vocation, there are no breaks. The demands of silence can be just as overwhelming and deafening as they can be restorative and life-giving. There’s much to be wrestled with, not just settled with.

In discerning one’s vocation to contemplative life, it’s essential to not conflate the desire for the pleasantries associated with quietude and community with the inability to do anything else or to be any other way. Only one of these paths leads to fruitful engagement of the spiritual technologies specific to this way of life.

~Sunyananda

Sabio es aquel que permanece quieto aunque esté en medio de una Odisea.

My alone time is essential to me.

"His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community."

Carl Jung

Psychological Types

Night has a different energy. Let's go to a more quieter place, so quiet where we could hear nothing other than our hearts beating for one another...

Random Xpressions

En la quietud mi Señor