“In our age, everything has to be a ‘problem.’ Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Yet our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.” – Thomas Merton.

In my intense and sometimes troubling world, finding quiet time in a quiet place is essential to my health and well-being, and I struggle with fear.

More and more, I understand the idea that fear is within me; I can’t blame it on the world beyond. To live with fear, I have to go inside. That works for me.

I go to my quiet place.

Merton introduced me to the idea that I didn’t need a temple or cathedral to find spiritual life and calm myself.

Find a quiet corner of your world; he wrote – a garage, a basement, an attic, some chairs out in the yard and out of sight. That was the beginning of my search for spiritual life, and it remained the foundation of my spiritual yearning.

We are so busy sometimes thinking that we forget what thinking really is.  We are too busy and distracted to think.

Thinking is very different from most of my life. I need a quiet place to consider and understand myself and my reality.

My first was in an attic in New Jersey, then a basement.

The quiet, I found, is like a blanket, soothing and peaceful.

I think I wanted to move to the country so badly because it is a quiet place with streams, fields, forests, and hills. I never have trouble finding quiet.

I love cities, but I know they are not a natural place for human beings, or perhaps, for me.

Now, my quiet place is the chairs outside in the back, the road blocked by the trees we planted, hills and woods in front of me.

Merton wrote that faith is a risk and a challenge, and it is most pure when we have to pay for it with effort and spiritual sacrifice.

I love this idea.

When I am frightened or troubled or angry or disappointed, or things do not go my way, which is frequent, then I get to my quiet place, bring a blanket, some tea, or cold water, depending on the weather, and I listen to the stones and the trees and the grass and the birds.

And I listen to me. And I hear me, often for the first time.

I work at it and feel safer, stronger, and more grounded. There are quiet places all around me, in the house, outside.

They give me a fixed point in a universe that always seems to be spinning. Fear is a part of me, but it is not useful to me.

“Very much of what we read in magazines or newspapers or see and hear in movies and elsewhere (or online) is completely useless from every point of view. The first thing I must do if I want to practice meditation is to develop a strong resistance to the futile appeals which modern society makes to my five senses.”

– Thomas Merton.