I am drawn into a phase of looking back on my life. I allow myself to experience and be aware of my weakness and my giftedness. My God, you call me to acceptance and appreciation of my unique self. You call me to a greater freedom in being with you.

Re-experience Of One's Sinfulness
          You draw me into the desert where I am brought face to face with myself in all my nakedness. A re-experince of my past here tells me who I am at present. I re-live my many sins. I feel them as they cut into my bones.
 
 

A Sense Of Quiet And Peace In Between
          Through the pain, despite the turbulence, I become less anxious, more at one with myself, more at peace. I have been loved into accepting your forgiveness.
 

A Fresh Insight Into God's Mercy And Goodness
          In this desert, I am brought face to face with God. While an overwhelming perception of my past sins brings me almost to despair, he is leading me to a fresh insight into his mercy and goodness.
 
 

A New  Awareness Of God's Giftedness
          I am being led to a new awareness of my giftedness. I re-experience in my heart my whole life as a gift. The recognition of your very least gift within me, Lord, is an experience so new and so intense that it overwhelms me and directs me to you.

          The awareness of the mystery in all your gifts is an inkling of the mystery of you. It is an inkling of the love of your divine heart longing to be accepted so that you can bestow on me your life and your joy. I rejoice over the experience of my nothingness that enables me to await all from God as little children await all from their parent. How can I repay all that you have given me?
 

Acceptance Of Oneself As Sinner And As One Being Forgiven
          This period of life review is one of turbulence. One day I am plunged almost into despair; another day I am lifted up by a deeper realization of God's love to me. In between, I experience quiet and peace. Through the purification of my life review, I am brought to a deep acceptance of myself as sinner and as one loved into accepting forgiveness.
          I find myself growing into greater freedom and humanism. I am feeling more comfortable with my own uniqueness and in becoming most truly myself. 
The transformation of my weakness into self-acceptance is emerging. I understand that this very openness to receive redemption is true humility. I am learning to allow the power of your grace to transform me.
 

Being Drawn Into A Union Of Love
          I accept your call, Lord, to stay in the desert where I may further realize my own nothingness and utter weakness. I may learn to let go of the last hold I have on my own controlled knowledge of you, of myself and of the world.

          It seems to me that through the dread of the purification of the senses, faculties and affections, you have taken me to a new threshold of union with you. I sense the being drawn into a union of love, that is so much beyond me, that it can only be received as an unearned gift. You come and go, yet always remain.

Yes, it is truly the Beloved who visits thee. But He comes invisible, hidden, incomprehensible. He comes to touch thee, not to be seen; to intimate His presence to thee, not to be understood; to make thee taste of Him, not to pour Himself out in His entirety; to draw thy affection, not to satisfy thy desire; to bestow the first fruits of His love, not to communicate it in its' fullness.⁽⁹⁾

Solitude, Silence: Inner Necessities
          Solitude and silence are inner necessities for me. I am invited to come to a lonely place all by myself and rest awhile.I am to surrender myself in silencing my own powers to become utterly receptive to God's mysterious gift of love.

          In the silence it will not be long before you are visited by God. He came to Elisha on Horeb at a moment of such silence that the murmuring of the slightest breeze could be heard (1K 19:12). When the Lord wants to raise a soul to contemplation, he obliges all its faculties to be silent, so as to commit itself to him alone. Stop bothering about yourself ... when, in a word, you have habitually lost sight of self, you will have penetrated the silent Holy of Holies, the inviolable sanctuary of your soul where God resides and whither he invites you. Of you as of Moses he will say:

          On the steppe there is only one sound: the moaning of the wind. "This is," runs an Arabic proverb, "the desert weeping because it would like to be a meadow" ... Only the breathing of the Spirit should be heard.⁽¹²⁾I perceive penance also as an inner necessity for the union of love to which I am being called. By renouncing creatures I acknowledge their nothingness before God's greatness. By renouncing the joys which they offer I acknowledge the sufficiency of God who is my Supreme Joy.
 

          What occurs at this phase is so beyond me, that it can only be received as unearned gift. God's revelation of self in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, changes my fear into loving attraction and my self-acceptance into self-forgetfulness. I am empowered with the capacity for communion.

Awareness Of One's Own Ignorance Of God
          You are transforming my whole life, Lord. As part of this contemplative transformation, you destroy the idols and images I have had of you, so that I may receive your fresh revelation.

          Only God Himself can let the bucket down into the depths in us. And on the other side, He must constantly work as the iconoclast. Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking, "but I never knew before. I never dreamed ..." I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas of Aquinas said of all of his theology: "It reminds me of straw".⁽¹³⁾ To truly know God, in all God's awesomeness, we must meet on God's terms. This asks of me a kenosis, an emptying.

... and then It (God's presence in darkness) breaks forth, even from the things that are beheld and from those that behold them, and plunges the true initiate into the Darkness of Unknowing, wherein he renounces all the apprehensions of his understanding and is enwrapped in that which is wholly intangible and invisible, belonging wholly to Him that is beyond all things and to none else (whether himself or another), and being through the passive stillness of all his reasoning powers united by his highest faculty to Him that is wholly Unknowable, of whom thus by a rejection of all knowledge, he possesses a knowledge that exceeds his understanding.⁽¹⁴⁾

True Knowledge Of God Is Complete Trust
          The soul, having entered the vast solitude of the Godhead, happily loses itself; and enlightened by the brightness of most lucid darkness, becomes through knowledge as if without knowledge, and dwells in a sort of wise ignorance. And although it knows not what God is, to whom it is united by pure charity, although it sees not God as He is in His glory, it yet learns by experience that He infinitely transcends all sensible things, and all that can be apprehended by the human intellect concerning Him. It knows God by this intimate embrace and contact better than the eyes of the body know the visible sun. This soul well knows what true contemplation is.⁽¹⁵⁾

          In this embrace you make me understand Lord, that to know you is to trust you, to abandon myself to you; to want nothing but you. To have found God, to have experienced Him in the intimacy of our being, to have lived even for one hour in the fire of His Trinity and the bliss of His Unity clearly makes us say: "Now I understand. You alone are enough for me".⁽¹⁶⁾

          Now I know that you love me Lord, and you can be trusted in all circumstances of life. I am being led to a joyous assent. A growing experience of your tenderness, care and concern beyond anything I could ask or imagine, draws and motivates me.
 

8. St. Patrick

9. Hugh of Victor in The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Image Books, 1973) p.290

10. Ruth McLean

11. A Monk, The Hermitage Within, Alan Neame, trans. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977), p.14

12. Ibid, pp.13-14

13. C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (Harcourt, N.Y.: Brace and World, 1964), p.84

14. "Pseudo Dionysius, Mystical Theology", The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973) p.49

15. Louis de Blois in The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973) pp. 358-59

16. Carlo Caretto, The God Who Comes, R.M. Hancock, trans. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1974), p.93

a. Ruth Mclean's Website can be found at: http://www.poemsforyou.org

b. Vicky Chen's Website can be found at: http://tidbits.0catch.com