Then, in the deep silence, wisdom begins to sing her unending, sunlit, inexpressible song: the private song she sings to the solitary soul. It is his own song and hers -- the unique, irreplaceable song that each soul sings for himself with the unknown Spirit, as he sits on the doorstep of his own being, the place where his existence opens out into the abyss of God's nameless, limitless freedom. It is the song that each one of us must sing, the song of grace that God has composed Himself, that He may sing it within us. It is the song of His mercy for us, which, if we do not listen to it, will never be sung. And if we do not join with God in singing this song, we will never be fully real: for it is the song of our own life welling up like a stream out of the very heart of God's creative and redemptive love.
Now each man's individual song, that he sings in secret with the Spirit of God, blends also in secret with the unheard notes of every other individual song. The voices of all the men who love God, the living and the dead, those who are on earth, those who suffer in the place of probation, those who have gone into the place of victory and rest: these voices all form a great choir whose music is heard only in the depths of silence, because it is more silent than the silence itself.
- Thomas Merton (Seasons of Celebration, pp.214-215) |
