If You Seek . . . song

LOVE
Winter. The festivity and (sometimes) frenetic pace of Christmas has passed. Now, I wait for the More Waiting of Lent. Somehow, perhaps divinely, the season seems perfectly synchronized with my station in life: a still, quiet, cold - sometimes lonely and unfriendly - time of waiting. Waiting for kids to get off the bus, waiting for word from editors and agents, waiting for direction for the future. Waiting for new birth that comes in the sprouts of springtime's buds and chrysalises.

The silence and solitude of this winter sometimes gets to me. I have to fight against an overwhelming urge to clog this time and space by watching too much TV, even reading or sleeping too much. I know I need to stay in, honor my present limbo. All the while, I will listen carefully for Word, stay alert to motion; try to trust that somewhere 'Aslan is on the move.'

I have a deep sense that what my soul really needs is to sit in the stillness. I feel impatient, though. I hate waiting! I want to forge ahead, force things. No matter what I do, I can't change this frozen white-covered and motionless moment: my present solitude. So, I will try to embrace the stillness.

Thomas Merton, a Tappist monk and author of The Seven Storey Kingdom, helps me with his poem.

If You Seek . . . song

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit
(Thou word and animal)
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon!
I am the appointed hour,
The "now" that cuts
Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash
Beyond "yes," beyond "no,"
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers:
For I, Solitude, am thine own self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!