Why Contemplative?

This week I’ve gone on a pilgrimage to a contemplative retreat. This week I’m practicing silence, stillness and solitude.

Why the contemplative? Why sit in silence, stillness and solitude?

I mean, really. Why? Because it can be really hard to be silent. In the silence my mom comes, my grief comes, my pain comes.

This pain is too deep, to visceral for my mind to understand. It can’t be put into words; it can barely be put into sobs. It leaves me breathless, wordless, prayer-less. And it hurts like hell.

But the contemplative – the contemplative is prayer without words. The contemplative is prayer without thoughts. The contemplative is prayer outside of mind, outside of reason. Instead it lives and breathes in body and soul.

When there is no logic that makes my mom’s death okay, the contemplative is there. When senseless things happen in my community, the contemplative is there.

So even though the pain comes in silence, the silence also gives voice to the pain. In the silence of contemplative prayer, God meets me. The God of mystery and miracles, the God of the unexplainable, the God of the voiceless. In contemplative prayer I’m free of rationalization, free of comprehension, free to know the God my mom knew – the God of children, of those with child-like faith. And slowly, slowly, as I sit more and more in God’s presence, as I let God unite my body and soul, the pain starts to heal, just a little bit.