The Sign From God ;-)

"We hear what we are trained to hear"

(As told in New York City) "Listen do you hear the cricket? With incredulity the response came. How can you hear a cricket with the noise from this mass of people surrounding us? He dropped a quarter on the sidewalk , and immediately a swarm of passersby stopped and looked." We hear what we are trained to hear.

So the 'sign from God'...it was right out my door lit up and to its left was the chapel. Every time I opened the door there it was...Luister...it means "listen". I had no clue that silence was the nucleus around which the rest of the community rules of the Benedictines lived in order that they might hear the still small voice of God. I had no idea where I was at spiritually, though I thought I knew. I was wrong, the bus driver was wrong...something did stop at the Abby...frivolous, thougthless, noisey, sin-filled talk. I had just entered an alternate universe, a parallel reality to texting, cell phones, loud music, TV, DVDs, e-mails, youtube, car alarms, barking dogs, boisterous drunks, coarse jesting, jabber, campaigners etc. I had just entered 48 hours of silence where the only words spoken were the words of psalms and hymns chanted in Latin and Dutch in antiphony. A prayer was breathed, a short Scripture recited and then silence. Everytime I opened my door to attend one of the orders of the day...there it was all lit up in my face..."Listen." More as I - a many worded Jerome - reflect and decompress later...pax et bonum...jerome