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Solitude is truthful and often delightful, even when painful. Loneliness is a hell made up of the illusion of separateness.

When we realize that the road we have been following may not be the one that is best for us, we must have the humility to admit that we have strayed, that we have been mistaken, that God knows better than we the life that will lead us to him. Nothing is more difficult than admitting that we have failed, that we have sinned. We feel haunted by the past. No matter how willing we are to do penance and suffer and take on the heavy burden of our guilt, in the end the greatest humility is accepting the role the Lord has written for us.

How does transformation happen? Ladder-climbing Western culture, and the human ego, made the Gospel into a message of spiritual advancement—ascent rather than descent. We hopefully advance in wisdom, age, and grace, but not at all in the way we thought. Jesus got it right! He taught the way of the cross and not the way of climbing. We come to God much more by doing things wrong than by doing things right. God leveled the human playing field by using our sins and failures to bring us to divine union.

In our noisy, cluttered world, we need silence. Silence heals, refreshes, energizes, inspires, sharpens, clarifies. It simplifies.