How many songs I have I cannot tell you. I keep no count of such things. There are so manyu occasions in one's life when a joy or a sorrow is felt in suich a way tthat the desire comes to sing; and so I only know that I have many songs. All my being is song, and I sing as I draw breath.... It is just a necfessary for me to sing as it is to breath.
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.