The Quieter Spaces (Lent 2021 Preview)
I write about many things: sobriety; spirituality; life examination; a layman’s take on politics; photography; the craft of writing. If you’ve been following my writing over the years, you’ve suffered my eclectic bag of words. Thank you.
We’re moving into Lent, a season in which I’m bound to write about silent spirituality and the search for quiet wisdom. That is, after all, what Lent has come to mean to me. It is a time to reflect on my own brashness, my penchant toward noise, my duplicity (which is nothing more than a fancy way for noting my own hypocrisy).
Beginning on Ash Wednesday, I’ll stretch into the quiet examination of Lent. I’m marking the season with a 40 day fast from Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be turning my digital energy back here, a place I’ve neglected too long. Consider joining me in the fast. Consider joining me on the journey, too. Let’s see what we’ll find in the quieter spaces. And if you need a guide this Lenten season, might I suggest grabbing a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life? There is something discretely Lenten in those pages, something that might guide you from any old addiction and toward true sobriety.
The Power of Silence and the Fuga Mundi
As you might know, I’ve been working on a series for my Substack paywall subscribers exploring silence through evocative photography and prose. Today, I released Silence, Episode 2. This is for paying members only, but I’m sharing an excerpt with you today. If you want to read the entire piece, subscribe here.
***
9. The Fuga Mundi
In his book, The Power of Silence, Cardinal Robert Sarah describes how a cloister (perhaps even a governor-imposed cloister) provides for the fuga mundi, or the “flight from the world to find solitude and silence.” Of the fuga mundi, he writes:
“It means the end of the turmoil, the artificial lights, the sad drugs of noise and the hankering to possess more and more goods, so as to look at heaven. A man who enters the monastery seeks silence in order to find God. He wants to love God above all else, as his sole good and his only wealth.”
There have always been cloisters, places to flee from the world—monasteries, cathedrals, nature herself. I have loved these cloisters when I have chosen them. When they have chosen me, I’ve loved them less.
We are in a season of cloistering, though it might be less of a flight and more of a divine pulling from the world. Still, there is a gift waiting in the silence: The God who is our sole good, our only wealth.
