When we sit prayerfully in silence and solitude we are entering the desert, our desert. In this sacred space, the goal is not to hide from others, devoid of pain, or to hold ourselves apart from and above the community in which we live. It is to receive the grace to learn to face ourselves directly so we can learn to live ordinariness, to live ethically and generously with others.
One night, as I kneeled beside my bed and prayed, I gazed through my window at the starry night. I thought of how God was THROUGH, and yet BEYOND, all space. Suddenly, I had the sensation of being surrounded by a musical harmony like a great anthem, only inaudible to the human ear. Then I just seemed to evaporate until I too was THROUGH and BEYOND the stars.
I was completely filling space, and the musical harmony was completely filling me. I did not see the proverbial Light, I experienced it. I did not hear the anthem, I was it... I understood that everything was part of God, everything in the universe was one.