Meditation.Desiring silence PROFOUND SILENCE IS NOT SOMETHING we fall into casually. This may indeed happen, and a blessed happening it is, but normally we choose to set aside a time and a place to enter into spiritual quietness. (Those who never do this, or who shrink from Verb 1. shrink from - avoid (one's assigned duties); "The derelict soldier shirked his duties" fiddle, shirk, goldbrick avoid - refrain from doing something; "She refrains from calling her therapist too often"; "He should avoid publishing his wife's it, run a very grave risk of remaining only half fulfilled as humans.) Craigie Aitchison's view of Holy Island pares PARES. A man's equals; his peers. (q.v.) 3 Bl. Com. 349. this choice down to its fundamental simplicities. Brown earth, blue sea, red sky, Holy Island a stony gray lit by glory. There is a small ship to take us across, if we choose to ride in it. There are no fudging elements here: All is clear-cut. This is not silence itself but rather the desire for silence. Silence, being greater than the human psyche, cannot be compressed within our intellectual categories; it will always elude us. But the desire to be silent, the understanding of the absolute need for it: This is expressed in Aitchison's wonderful diagram of life within the sight of the holy. --SISTER WENDY BECKETT Sister Wendy Beckett (born February 25 1930) is a South African-born British art expert, consecrated virgin and contemplative hermit who became an unlikely celebrity during the 1990s, presenting a series of acclaimed art history documentaries for the BBC. SISTER WENDY BECKETT of Norfolk, England is well-known for her BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. and PBS PBS in full Public Broadcasting Service Private, nonprofit U.S. corporation of public television stations. PBS provides its member stations, which are supported by public funds and private contributions rather than by commercials, with educational, cultural, television art series and her popular art books. Reprinted with permission from: Sister Wendy's Book of Meditations (DK Publishing, 1998; 888-342-5357). Painting: Holy Island from Lamlash, Craigie Aitchison, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. |
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