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In the hustle and bustle of the current day, it is easy to forget that many in the not-too-distant past resorted to solitude and silence to work through their struggles.  It was a monastic approach to facing one’s troubles, and to those living today who cannot imagine a time without cellphones and instant access, that approach is unimaginable.  We are in the midst of a social crisis where gazing absentmindedly into glowing rectangles is the norm, but rest assured that this terrible habit will come back to haunt us if it has not already done so.  The solution?  I submit, dear listeners, that we need to harken back to a time when stillness was not to intimidating – when it was welcomed, even sought out.  As it is, we have traded healthy tranquility for convenience, and as a result, the neurosis only grows bigger.  I look out at my students before class.  All of them, everyone, is glued to their phones, and the battle only continues when I start class.  The temptation to look down is just too great. 

I have mentioned before in other episodes that both sets of my grandparents suffered the loss of their oldest child.  I watched how my dad’s parents grieved his passing, and I did the same with my mom’s parents.  It was difficult not to compare and contrast – not to carefully and respectfully observe differences in coping mechanisms.  All of it was sad.  Each of my grandparents handled it uniquely. 

Granny, my dad’s mom, threw herself into work as a realtor.  Her husband, my grandfather, told and retold the stories.  My gramma, my mom’s mother, sealed herself off in a little room and painted.  My grampa, her husband, retired to the woodshed.  I remember him being in that woodshed until past dark.  Summer.  Fall.  Winter.  It may have been an escape.  The grandkids were oftentimes rambunctious.  It may have been something else – something wholly unplugged, to put it in modern day parlance.  It may have even been something sacred.  He would run the fixed circular saw to make kindling for the fire.  What else he did I do not know. 

Here in Georgia we have a monastery - The Monastery of the Holy Spirit – located in Conyers, about a half hour or so east of Atlanta.  The brothers take their silence reverently.  Many retreats are silent retreats, and those who participate are expected to keep mum.  It is difficult for me to drive out to the monastery, so I make do with a walk to Simpsonwood Park with my dog, Arrow.  As a general rule, I extinguish all devices upon entering the trail.  Out come the earbuds, and I take my walk through the woods with nothing but the sounds of birds should they choose to utter a peep.  It is in the silence that I am better able to hear God.  Nothing is forced.  Nothing coerced.  I simply allow the conversation to unfold as it will, discovering, at times, that the thing I wanted to pray about was not the thing that took center stage. In short, I get it.  I get the need for silence.  I get the desire for disconnection.  I can never know what he was thinking or feeling, but I wonder if his nightly retreat to the woodshed amounted to a form of prayer. What did grampa do but go to a familiar place back behind the house on the hill and do what he had been doing for years: cut kindling, stack wood, all to heat a house now occupied by two, the voices of his six daughters calling out for daddy from years past. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Requiem 

An old man sits in a 

dark shed on a winter’s eve, and 

he is surrounded by 

cord wood packed tight, 

knots out and up against the aged frame. 

He is doused in the pale yellow light of 

a naked bulb, and he is thinking, not 

about the fixed circular saw before him or 

the kindling he is making with each 

screaming pass, but of something else: 

his alone.  The dog 

is warm inside the house.  The sky 

is black and deep.  The old man 

fills his wheelbarrow, rises, hoists, 

and pushes, his only utterance, 

the soft crunch of icy snow.