My homeless unemployed and nonpracticing attorney friend Ramona is proving to be demanding. I am securing her housing with my landlord, positive he will allow her to stay, working it out with her son, ensuring her rent is cared for. The woman suffers from scoliosis, limited physically in what she can do. My heart goes out to her, a determination solidifying that I will assist her in establishing residency. She comes attached to a border collie, the dog attaining a spot within my heart. Luke is a beautiful and intelligent dog. He has been living with the woman in her car, suffering in temperament. It is remarkable the turn for the better his disposition has taken with a roof over his head and steady exercise. Tomorrow, I will provide him with a bath, brushing, and nail clipping. I have taken Luke for a walk the last three days, enjoying a revitalization of Cain Park with him. It is a pleasant thought to consider Ramona and Luke will become fixtures within my home. I am positive my landlord, Carter, upon his return from Virginia, will appreciate her law school education and her extreme liberal political views. Fellowship within the home should blossom. The difficult part is conversation with the woman proves delicate. She is extremely sensitive regarding about every subject, politics and religion proving volatile. Her passive aggressive nature demands to be right, declarative statements constantly being hurled from her tongue. She is woman who needs to be right. She is a woman who needs to declare others are wrong. Focused upon injustices in the world, pointing fingers of blame and shame upon history and those of conflicting mindset, there is a desperate overwhelming consciousness perpetually asserting unsatisfiable demands upon the world and others, the role of victimhood seeking justification and sanctification through government intercession. There is no polite disagreeing with her, nor questioning her opinions, and even more, those in opposition to her are stripped of dignity, reduced to a satanic and inherently evil status. I have presented confrontational political and religious views to her, only to witness her spiral downward into a tirade of accusations, hysterical rebuttals, and angry arguments. Her coping skills regarding any conversational conflict of ideals is nonexistent. I teased her that she is overly educated rather than highly educated. The words proving to be a mischievous mistake, reducing her to tears. The simplest exchange of words can explode into a vehement confrontation. An absolute focus upon peace becoming imperative. I will do everything I can to ensure the woman garners a roof over her head, while conceding she will be a difficult woman to share a home with. I receive the troubling call for assistance as a blessing.
The contemplative way, another reposting, time is short, and vigils make silent satisfiable demands. Silence is more than a lack of words. ‘Be still and know that I am God’ is more than doing nothing. The contemplative way is a profound trust in God, prayer the vehicle of worldly detachment and divine unification, the dispensing of grace.
Enlightened minds know that silence will be the language of heaven. Already on earth it is the condition for essential communication: “One word spoke the Father, which word was His Son, and this word he speaks ever in eternal silence, and in silence it must be heard by the soul.”
That is why the Psalm points out that language of heaven, both day and night, is a silent language, “there is no speech….heard” (Psalm 19:3)
To find again something of this hidden language, to communicate beyond words, is to find again the secret of the Holy Family; it is to escape from a multitude of misunderstandings, of complications, even of illnesses. It is open to oneself to unknown possibilities of intellectual, poetic, expressions of love. That is why St John of the Cross points out: “That which we most need in order to make progress is to be silent before the great God, with the desire and with the tongue, for the language that He best hears is that of silent love.” Andrew Doze, “Joseph: Shadow of the Father”
BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD
