Finding a place

     The first problem is to find a place where the outer confusion can be

shut off, where the bright lights and the telephone cannot break in, and 

where even religious discussion is stilled.  The purpose is not to create, 

or make something happen, but to allow it to happen, and where it 

takes place is an individual matter.  Some people find it easy to quiet 

down in a church where the rule of silence is observed.  For others it 

may be one's own room, or in a  garden or near the water, or on a 

mountain top.

     ...there is manna in certain places that can draw a person in silence, 

for instance in a room which has known the silence and listening of 

many people.  This was the kind of power that Jacob felt when he 

awoke from dreaming  of the ladder to heaven and cried out, "Truly, 

Yahweh, is in this place and I never knew it!"  Then he was afraid and 

said, "How awe-inspiring this place is!  This is nothing less than a 

house of God; this is the gate of heaven!"  And he made a sacred 

monument of the stone on which he had lain and poured oil on top 

of it, and he named the place Bethel (Genesis 28:10-19).  We in the 

Western tradition are often reluctant to admit that there is reality 

behind an experience like this.

     ...Each of us can have a place like this, where stillness can take over 

and one becomes open to a reality beyond oneself.

                                           Morton T. Kelsey,  The Other Side of Silence

Who is Morton T. Kelsey?  Morton Kelsey died at the age of 84 in 2001.  

He was an Episcopalian priest who wrote dozens of books on spiritual 

formation.  Kelsey also helped develop the spiritual formation program 

at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California.

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