2012.03.25 02:26
The Quiet Life In his classic "The Imitation of Christ," Most of us start life as the center of the There are people, like some pop stars,
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2012.03.25 09:11
2012.03.25 15:55
"enjoy being unknown and regarded as nothing."
What he means is the ability to persist through tedium, to survive without the
oxygen of recognition, praise and stroking, to do some good things every day that
are seen only by God.
By living this way, one is much more freer and much less burdened.
Not many of us understand the virtue of it.
Most of us start life as the center of the universe, being stroked and attended to.
In our upbringing in the early Korean republics through the Korean war and social chaos,
we have learned and realized that we are not the center of the universe.
Actually, we are lucky and blessed to have learned the rule of the world in our early age.
Learning from Silence
There is a story from the desert fathers.
A man came to the abbot seeking a word from him.
The old man said, "Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."....
As St. Anthony explained, "The one who sits in solitude and quiet has escaped from three wars:
hearing, speaking and seeing; yet against one thing shall he continually battle:
that is, his own heart."
More than a thousand years later Pascal was of the same mind:
"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."
.... from the same book quoted above in the text.