Solitude and Silence: a practical outworking

Monday is my sabbath. Nothing is scheduled for Mondays. If there are emergencies I respond, but there are surprisingly few. My wife joins me in observing the day. We make a lunch, put it in a daypack, take our binoculars and drive anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour away, to a trailhead along a river or into the mountains. Before we begin our hike my wife reads a psalm and prays. After that prayer there is no more talking - we enter into a silence that will continue for the next two or three hours, until we stop for lunch.

We walk leisurely, emptying ourselves, opening ourselves to what is there: fern hsapes, flower fragrance, birdsong, granite outcropping, oaks and sycamores, rain, snow, sleet, wind... When the sunor our stomachs tell us it's lunch time, we break the silence with a prayer of blessing for the sandwiches and fruit, the river and the forest. We are free to talk now, sharing bird sightings, thoughts, observations, ideas - however much or little we are inclined. We return home in the middle or late afternoon, putter, do odd jobs, read. After supper I usually wirte family letters. That's it. No Sinai thunder. No Damascus Road illuminations. No Patmos visions. A day set apart for solitude and silence. Not-doing. Being-there. The santification of time.

-Eugene Peterson (from Cure for the Common Life by Max Lucado)