There are times not to answer the door, not to answer the phone, not to do undone things, but to rest in silence from everything. The world can wait five minutes. In fact no matter how busy we are, no matter how well organized, no matter how little rest we allow ourselves, we will never do all that needs to be done. But to do well what we are called to do, it is essential to nurture a capacity for inner stillness. Such quiet, deep-down listening is itself prayer.
I am done with talk of death except as it
is a part of life, one side of a sphere
whose roundness would otherwise be
incomplete. In a letter van Gogh wrote,
"The earth had thought to be flat...
science has proved that the world is
round... they persist nowadays in
believing that life is flat and runs from
birth to death. However, life, too, is
probably round."
~ Fenton Johnson in THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEART