silence

I went to the convent Thursday evening to do a full two days of silent individual retreat Friday and Saturday (I came home Sunday morning).  I hope another time I can do a silent retreat where I am still and wait for God.  This one was pretty noisy in my head--I wrote 24 pages of what is in effect a journal, several pages on a short story I have been writing intermittently, and 5 pages on the subject of dependence.  I had some sore muscles in my shoulders when I got home, I think from writing so much.  God was leading me--I put something that happened to me into my short story and that inspired me to pick up one of the books I had brought with me: The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community by Harlan Lane.  That book turned out to inspire me to think in new ways about dependence.  I was struggling with some issues of being alone, and I had a powerful experience of not being alone with those issues.