OUR PLACE

Flannery O’Conner (1925-1964) wrote, “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place… Nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”

Another saying goes, “You can’t get away because when you get there you are there as well.” All of this is to point out that different locations and scenery are important and enjoyable but if we are not peaceful internally… rarely will an ocean or pine tree make us so.

Anthony de Mello (1931-1987) wrote this called ‘Emptiness’
“Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the Silence of the monastery would be shattered.

This would upset the disciples, not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the Silence.

To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.”

Such is the way of finding our place as well.

“Foxes have dens, and the birds in the sky have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus