Sylvan Lake, September 2024

I snapped this picture on our camping trip earlier this fall. A morning of quiet.

I penned the words below a month  earlier after returning home from our Sanctuary. Another place of quiet.

Did you read last week’s post, The Loneliness of Busyness? If not, please scroll up and read it first. This post will make more sense with that context.

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From my journal, August 5, 2024 …

I’m sitting on our deck watching the Aspen leaves bend in the gentle breezes. A dog barks in the distance. The tall Ponderosa Pines almost … but not quite … hide the dirt road. We live in the woods. Sometimes a car passes. The birds visit. It is quiet.

We just returned from three weeks at our cabin, our Sanctuary in the Wet Mountains. It was so very quiet there. The quiet here is different.

Our Sanctuary

At our Sanctuary, we spent long mornings with coffee, reading, journaling, and occasionally looking up to enjoy the view. Green Horn Peak, the 12,352′ mountain anchors my view to the east; The Sangre de Cristo mountains are to the south. Deep blue skies with feathery white clouds above. Sometimes the contrails of a plane too high to even hear its sound as it flies by chalk the blue with white. The birds offer their greetings. It is quiet.

The quiet of our Sanctuary is a deeper quiet, a soul-penetrating quiet. It invites listening.

“Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;”
Hosea 6:3

Hearing from God seems somehow easier at our Sanctuary.

We’re back home now at our home in the woods. Although the quiet is not the same, our Sanctuary time cemented something deep in my soul.

I want … no I NEED those times of quiet.
I want … no I NEED those times of listening, of being attentive to God.

Rest Re-establishes Routines.

The quiet was a type of rest, re-orienting me to the importants.

I return home with new resolve — Keep the discipline of quiet a reality here.

“The careful balance between silence and words,
withdrawal and involvement,
distance and closeness,
solitude and community
forms the basis of the Christian life and should therefore,
be the subject of our most personal attention.”
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude

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My August 5 journal entry speaks again. Like Mary and Martha (from last week’s post), I hear the voice of God, Sue, re-create those regular times of quiet and be attentive to the voice of God.

My seat now is in my writing room. Weather invites me in. But my three large windows look out. I start my mornings enjoying God’s creation from the inside. It is quiet.

Quiet mornings are my intentional decision to mark the next several weeks.
What are your ideas for creating quiet in the midst of your reality?
Let’s help each other.

Copyright: Sue Tell, October 2024

Available at your favorite bookseller November 12, 2024