Silence, Solitude and Wisdom: From Thoughts in Solitude by the Reverend Thomas Merton (vegetarian), Part 2 of 2

Let us continue with excerpts from Thomas Merton’s book, “Thoughts in Solitude.” Where the Reverend teaches us to enhance our connection with God through silence and solitude.

“Actual solitude has, as one of its integral elements, the dissatisfaction, and uncertainty that come from being face to face with an unrealized possibility. It is not a mad pursuit of possibilities— it is the humble acquiescence that stabilizes us in the presence of one enormous reality which is in one sense already possessed and in another a ‘possibility’— an object of hope. It is only when the solitary dies and goes to Heaven that he sees clearly that this possibility was already actualized in his life and he did not know it— for his solitude consisted above all in the ‘possible’ possession of God, and of nothing else but God, in pure hope.”

“Solitude has to be objective and concrete. It has to be a communion in something greater than the world, as great as Being itself, in order that in its deep peace we may find God. We put words between ourselves and things. Even God has become another conceptual unreality in a no-man’s-land of language that no longer serves as a means of communion with reality.”

“When we have lived long enough alone with the reality around us, our veneration will learn how to bring forth a few good words about it from the silence which is the mother of Truth. Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do 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. Truth rises from the silence of being to the quiet tremendous presence of the Word. Then, sinking again into silence, the truth of words bears us down into the silence of God. Or rather God rises up out of the sea like a treasure in the waves, and when language recedes His brightness remains on the shores of our own being.”