I sit in the barn this morning. Here, in the Hermitage of Peace, door is open to the outside world of bird and birdsong, moving clouds, and floating, multicolored butterflies - all enfolded in beauty and quiet. Alone I sit, where once hung and cooked tobacco, as far back as when my dad, age 80, was a young boy - for he hung tobacco where I now sit as his son of age 53. I sit, moving fingers over prayer beads, eyes open and then closed, sometimes praying mentally and then speechless inwardly and outwardly. What is happening? What is being accomplished? This would look to many as useless. In a sense, this is. That is a lesson of Silence. What appears useless is finally useful, what appears profitless is profitable. Possibly, Grace, at last, must submerge us who define our lives by socially constructed ideas of useful and profitable, into this Mystery that appears without use or profit, a waste of time and energy, for us to learn what we truly need to give our lives to and for. Prayerfulness is countercultural, exactly for it will not fit inside the bounds of what is esteemed worthy of giving ourselves to and for.

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